


Stay

by emmaothorell



Series: Forget Me Not [2]
Category: Supernatural, destiel - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Alternate Universe - Parents, Anal, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Dean, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Blow Jobs, Bottom Castiel, Boys In Love, Canon Bisexual Character, Castiel & Meg Masters Friendship, Castiel is a Novak, Castiel-centric, Domestic, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Castiel, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Domestic Dean Winchester, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Kink, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, F/M, Face-Fucking, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, Gay, Gay Bar, Gay Bashing, Gay Parents, Gay Rights, Gay Sex, Hand Jobs, Home, Homoeroticism, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Homoromantic, Homosexuality, Human Castiel, Human Meg, Jessica Moore Lives, Love, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Male Slash, Meg Lives, Minor Ellen Harvelle/Bobby Singer, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), POV Castiel, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Parents Castiel & Dean Winchester, Past Castiel/Meg Masters, Pet Names, Protective Castiel, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Parents, Relationship(s), Romantic Fluff, Sex, Sexual Content, Sharing a Bed, Slash, Slice of Life, Top Castiel, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaothorell/pseuds/emmaothorell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas has finally started their family and life together. But the past just don't seem to want to leave them alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life in the yellow house

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! The sequel! Please comment as much as you can manage - it would make me so so sooo happy. And as you know; comments makes me write faster.

 

* * *

 

_"Never apologise for burning too brightly or collapsing into yourself every night. That is how galaxies are made."_

-Tyler Kent White.

 

* * *

**  
Sunnyville countryside, Winds Hollow, Kansas. June 25th, 2015.**

The doorknob to the bathroom was a bit tricky before you figured out how to pull and lock with just enough amount of force and in just the way to get it right. The staircase that whirled up, curving itself around the wall to the right before it became one with the bright wood of the upstairs floorboards, had quite a few squeaky steps. It didn't matter how lightly and carefully you stepped on them. Believe it; Cas had tried. Strangely enough they seemed to whine more if one, for example, tried to sneak up or down the steps at night while the two other members of the Winchester-Novak family slept. Darkness somehow made all noises sound louder. A small window up in the attic could not be opened due to its broken hinges. Cas had tried that too, that first summer when they had stored away some of his boxes up there, and the heat had been unbarable. The small window would have fallen out and met its fate with the ground far below, if Cas hadn't caught it in time. The dishwasher hatch needed an extra push to click and close properly, and the entire fuse box on the wall below the stairs in the cellar, would shut down if they tried to run three appliances at the same time. He had gotten to know the yellow house as if it had a soul, and he liked its imperfections. They were homely. At least the scruples that wasn't a hazard and needed to be fixed immediately.

They had been at this for about two years now. He and Dean. One year as a test run where Cas visited Dean and Grace as often as he could. One year, living under the same roof, together, like some kind of family, in the yellow house. Cas found himself agreeing with the green hills, dark forests and golden fields more than the hard, motionless concrete in any city. He actually tried to avoid going into town altogether, making up excuses even for himself. Anything to stay in this dream world of theirs, where he could distance himself and pretend like nothing was real except for them and their life together. The fresh air that smelled of freedom and serenity. The alluring waves of the lake as white foam danced on it, crashing softly against the pier and the shore. The hammering sounds that came from the garage on days when Dean turned the space into his own, personal workshop where he created timeless, handcrafted furniture in the warm sunlight, for well-paying customers. Cas was just as amazed everytime at the beautiful things Dean could make with his rugged hands.

He wanted to stay in all of this. He didn't want to face people's questions anymore, and he didn't want to keep hearing that he was different. He was a grown man now, for God's sake. His memory was slightly off, as it had been for quite a few years now and he didn't really mind it anymore. And he wasn't different either. _Are you alright? Do you remember anything else? Have you met any nice girls?_ The only people who called him these days were his psychologist who still insisted on regular sessions, and Sam and Bobby who frequently came out to the house for barbecues with their families every other weekend. When Cas' mother called, he never picked up the phone. Thank God for caller ID.

He leaned forward an inch and met the edge of the wooden countertop with his hipbones and midriff covered by the black fabric of his pants. He poured the steaming liquid into a mug before setting the kettle back down in its place, thinking about existance and all that. Was this it? The way he made his morning coffee. Was that what made him different in everyone else's eyes? Or the way he held the kettle? Or the way he took out the rectangular package of coffee powder from the top cabinet to the left by the window? Or maybe it was his breakfast. He thought about all of this as he went on with his morning routines. The clock was nearly half past seven already. Maybe it was the way he brushed his teeth, filled the dishwasher, or coughed. Maybe it was his hair. He raked his fingers through it in the bathroom mirror, giving himself a questionable stare. It could be his dark locks that made him different. He didn't wash it everyday anymore, and it was more or less tousled all the time. Maybe it was the way he walked, he thought as he headed up the stairs. He took one squeaky step at a time, unlike Dean who liked to skip one and take two. Cas had a weird swing in his hips when he walked fast. That could be it.

He turned to the left at the top of the stairs. The door to their shared bedroom was ajar. Particles danced in a warm beam of sunlight which radiated out to him in the hallway, disappearing somewhere in the air. He pushed the white wooden door open softly and gazed in at a sleeping Dean before he walked in and sat down on the bed next to him. The shift in the mattress made Dean turn and mumble a little before he peeled his eyes open with a frown.

"Good morning" Cas said raking his fingers back through Dean's hair. He kissed the wrinkle between his eyebrows before he stood up and reached for the blue tie that hanged over the back of a chair.

"Mornin'" Dean replied, voice rugged and unused. The sound of his words was muffled when he rolled over closer and pressed his face down into Cas' pillow.

Cas looked at himself in the small mirror on the wall by his bedside. He threw the tie around the white, turned up collar of his shirt and started tying it in silence.

"The kid... She up?"

"Sleeping." When Cas did the last tuggs and fixes with his tie, he caught Dean watching him in the corners of his eye.

"What're you thinking about?" Dean asked. Cas pursed his lips slightly and shrugged one shoulder.

"Nothing of importance" he answered. He let go of the tie and affirmed to himself in the mirror that it looked okay. It was no fun to replace his comfortable sweaters with the tie and jacket. It meant that he had to go into town and talk to his psychologist, doctor Jody Mills, about his memories. He didn't want to. He didn't like it.

He reluctantly pulled on his black jacket and turned to Dean, finding him on his back, fiddling with his big Android phone.

"Twitter?"

"Mm-hmm" Dean answered distantly. Cas snorted and smiled. He had taught Dean how Twitter worked and now Dean couldn't keep his hands off of that phone.

Cas couldn't help himself when he suddenly leaned forward with his knees on the bed, searching out Dean's lips with his own and Dean met the deep kiss, all to Cas' delight. His body began feeling warm and heavy, and he almost lowered himself down atop Dean. But Dean started chuckling, pushing Cas' face away with the palm of his hand.

"There's this... account... with all this smart crap" he began, turning his unwavering atteniton back to the phone again. Cas sighed and stood up. "And it says that people with RA, retrograde TBI and/or PTA can be helped with music therapy." His eyes moved over the screen for a second more before he looked up and met Cas' accusatory eyes. "What?"

"I can't believe you're still doing this." He shook his head at Dean, underlining what he had just said. His brows were scrunched together and he began feeling tearful for no reason. "I'm not going to get anything more back." He had known it for a long time now and he had began accepting it. "Isn't it enough that I chose you even without our memories?" He didn't wait for an answer. Without buttoning the jacket over his shirt, he turned, walked out of the room and back downstairs. He heard the steps squeak again behind him as Dean followed him to the kitchen. Cas stopped in front of the window with his hands on the counter for a second before he opened the dishwasher. He could feel Dean drawing near behind him.

"I'm sorry, Cas."

He slowed down, stopping with a pan in his hand. Hands on his hips, chest against his back, lips on his neck. He relaxed and stepped back almost imperceptibly into Dean's embrace. Soon he felt how Dean tugged at his tie and collar.

"Dean-?"

"Were you raised in a barn?" he asked jokingly, fixing Cas' clothes. Cas scoffed with a smile and pushed Dean away with his hand on Dean's bare chest. Dean chuckled and moved over to grab himself some coffee. They were silent for a moment and enjoyed the warm Thursday morning.

"I'll be off in a second" Cas proclaimed. "Is there anything we need in town?" He asked even though all he really wanted was to get back home as quickly as possible. Dean ignored the question.

"Why you always have to do a thousand things at the same damn time?"

Cas didn't stop at Dean's question. He hadn't even noticed that he had began to mess about in the kitchen. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was what made him different. The way he never could sit down and take it easy before the dishes were dealth with. Or how he cleaned the sink while he sat on the toilet. Was it the way he folded the laundry? How he piled the towels? Or how he sorted their clothes in the drawers? He continued to fill the dishwasher, wipe off the countertop and get müsliebars from the top cupboard, by the coffee powder.

"Seriously, Cas. You need to get a job. This... stay at home, cleaning frenzy is driving me crazy."

"Well, it's not like the governor is going to change his mind any time soon" Cas replied. "It's not that easy. I'd have no security at a-"

"Fuck Broback" Dean interrupted. Cas gave him a stern, frightened stare. His heart suddenly raced, for some reason. "What? You think they've got the house bugged or something?" Dean pretended to throw worried glances around the corners of the kitchen.

Cas furrowed his brows annoyedly and turned back to his bag on the counter. He walked over to the refrigerator to get out a bottle of bubble watter. There was a note on the fridge door, with the number for The Brain Injury Association of America. He pulled it off the door and crumpled it in his fist.

"I still see the wheels turning in that head of yours" Dean insisted.

"I'll be late" Cas said flatly, throwing another glance at the clock. Ten to eight. Dean scoffed to himself.

"Well- Don't forget that Ellen'll come by today with Bobby's floor wax machine" he reminded, leaning back on his chair.

"Don't forget to put a fiver in the jar." He nodded at the glass jar on the kitchen counter. It had a note on it, tied with strings around it. The words 'SMOKED MONEY' were written across it.

Dean had barely taken a sip of his coffee when an earsplitting scream erupted from Grace's room down the hall. The sound made them both stop with what they were doing. Cas let his head fall back for a second before he turned to Dean with a pleading look in his eyes. Dean drew a deep breath, exhaled and put down his mug on the table, standing up.

"I'm on it." He disappeared and Cas followed but trailed off towards the front door instead of down the hallway towards Grace's room. "See you in a few then" Dean said from afar with his voice raised. Cas walked outside without bothering to answer him, since Dean probably wouldn't be able to hear him over the sound of their crying three year old anyway.

Maybe it was the way he hung the laundry. He liked to do it outside now in the summer. Automatically he turned his head and shifted his eyes over his right shoulder, towards the two trees not that far from the house. The clothesline between them had started to slacken. He needed to tighten it. And buy new pins. He took a detour to the mailbox by the roadside. Just some news sheets from the grocery store in town, and a forwarded birthday card from Anna. He furrowed his brows, checked the return adress and slowly felt a warmth growing inside of him. He held the card to his chest and smiled a little to himself as he walked back up the driveway.

"Back so soon?" Dean said, bobbing a yawning Grace in his arms.

Cas held up the birthday card, still filled with a euphoric sensation as if a stone had been lifted from his heart.

"My sister remembered my birthday."

Dean smiled.

"Of course she did" he said with confidence.

"It's early as heck though." He laughed and put the card upright on top of the chest of drawers in the hallway, leaned against a photo frame.

"You gonna complain?"

"No, I'm just-... I'll see you later." Cas gave him a quick kiss on the lips, Grace a quick kiss on the top of her head, and headed out to his car again.

"Have a good day, handsome!"

The drive into town didn't take long. He was only a few minutes late but doctor Mills wasn't too hard on him for it. She gave him a warm smile from her seat opposite of him. Her eyes were kind and her short, spikey hair was coloured in a dark red shade, framing her face nicely. The session continued as all the ones before with Cas holding back and avoiding questions as best as he could. When he finally got out of there he willed himself to pick some things up at the farmer's market before he drove back home. It was almost time for lunch when he walked up the steps to the porch, meeting Grace in the doorway. She wobbled, slightly unsteadily, towards him with a wide smile on her face.

"Daddy!"

Cas couldn't keep himself from smiling when he sank down to her level on the floor, letting go of his bag and the groceries in order to hug his daughter. Dean emerged from the livingroom and wiped his hands off on his pants.

"Hi there, Gracie."

"Daddy! Can we get a cat, daddy?"

"Er-..." Cas was caught off guard and had to blink a few times to get his thoughts back on track. His first instinct was to say yes because he too wanted a cat to snuggle with. But when he looked up and met Dean's amused facial expression, he found himself again. "Gracie. Your daddy is allergic to cats, so no."

"You're allergic?" She looked shocked. Cas smiled softly at her, stroking the blond hair out of her face.

"No. Other daddy."

Dean crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe to the livingroom straight ahead, watching them. Grace seemed to think about this information in all seriousness for a moment.

"When daddy dies can we get a cat?" Her rephrased question made Cas choke on the air he was breathing as he broke out laughing. He raised his gaze, meeting Dean's frown and smile.

"Sure, Grace" he answered. She smiled back at him with content before she started tugging at the grocery bag.

"I can take that, Grace" Dean suddenly said, walking up to them.

"No!" Grace exclaimed stubbornly, meekly pulling the groceries across the floor with both hands. Dean raised his hands.

"Okay, okay!" He followed her slow steps to the kitchen to make sure she was okay. Cas smiled at them even after they rounded the corner out of his sight. He could hear their continued conversation as he stood up and stepped on the heels of his shoes to get out of them.

"Can we get an owl then?" Grace asked Dean. Cas heard him chuckle before answering.

"But owls are nocturnal. And little warriors like you sleep at night" he explained.

"Yes, owls are not turtles" was Grace's simple reply. Cas started laughing again as he walked towards the doorway to the kitchen. He suddenly felt his heart skip in an unpleasant way as he lost his balance and fell to the shiny parquet. His left side hurt and he wailed involuntarily. Dean appeared immediately on one knee in front of him with his hands all over Cas as if to make sure nothing was broken.

"Cas! Are you okay? I told you I'd wax the floors today!" He sounded accusatorial and worried to death at the same time.

"I'm not that fragile" Cas moaned, holding his hand over the ribs on his left side as he began standing up. Dean tried to help but Cas waved him off. He saw Grace huddling under the kitchen table, surrounded by some of her toys. She looked scared. "Daddy's fine" Cas assured her and snorted to himself when she turned her attention back to her dolls. "See? Grace understands that I'm not a weak, old bag of bones."

"Alright" Dean said, giving in. He still seemed to be on edge, watching Cas as he walked into the kitchen, pulled out a chair a few meters from the table and sat down. Cas didn't mean to but he scrunched up his face out of pain when he did so. "I can get us something to eat" Dean suggested. Cas waved a hand at him, motioning for him to do as he wanted.

"That was a bad move, when I fell. Clumsy, don't you think, Grace?" He looked down at her where she sat on her knees with one of Dean's old robot dolls in one hand and her new princess doll in the other. She looked up and met his eyes with her blue ones.

"No, daddy. It was very graceful" she affirmed seriously with a nod. She shifted her eyes to her toys and then back up to him, pensively. "When we say something nice, even if we don't mean it, that's called being polite, right?" Dean chuckled, muffling a laugh as he fried something on the stove.

"Yes" Cas answered, at a loss for words. He couldn't get over how smart she was. She seemed satisfied with the reply and with her own knowledge, because she resumed playing. She mumbled inaudible things in different voices and moved around the dolls she held in her hands.

"That's right, Grace" Dean encouraged with a grin. "Your daddy has always been a clumsy dork."

"Hey- No" Cas admonished, pointing at Dean. He tried to sound stern as a smile began spreading on his unwilling lips. His eyes shifted between Dean by the stove and Grace under the table, just to see that they both understood. "I was very cool in school. The other kids just didn't know it."

"We were better at sock skating than you, daddy" Grace said, poking at Cas' left leg. Cas' eyes widened and sought out Dean's for an explanation. All he got was a trying, apologetic smile as Dean waved the spatula in the air.

"We weren't supposed to tell him about that" Dean said to Grace, his eyes glued on Cas. "You promised. I gave you an ice cream." There was a short silence as Grace shrugged her shoulders. She never shifted her attention from her toys.

"You must never tell a lie" she said flatly. "Or you'll be locked in a tower forever and you'll die." Cas snorted and frowned at her morbid words. He then assumed that she was refering to her "Barbie as Rapunzel" movie, and the fact that Cas knew that, was a strong indicator that he had seen way to many children's movies lately.

The two men locked eyes again, almost turning it into a staring-contest.

"Sorry" Dean said with a charming smile he knew Cas never could resist. "We were very careful" he assured, flipping over the hot-dogs in the frying pan. Cas tried to calm himself down and stop picturing Grace flying around the livingroom.

"Don't forget to make a salad" he ordered, letting go of the subject. Grace moaned dramatically under the table.

"Salad is ruining my life" she proclaimed.

"That's my girl" Dean grinned.

"Dean!"

"What?" Their eyes met again and Dean gave in. He must have seen the warning on Cas' face. "Oh- Ehm- Grace, salad is good for you."

"No!" she replied from under the table before resuming her dolls' mumbling conversation. Dean shifted his eyes back to Cas, looking for approval.

"I tried." Cas rolled his eyes. "She's still my girl, though. She may look like an angel but today she told Ellen to bite her 'shiny metal ass'. Our daughter is so cool." He grinned widely and Cas couldn't help but warm up at the mental image of Ellen's surprised face.

"You have a way too low threshold for fatherly pride" Cas said, pursing his lips in an attempt to hide his amused smile. "And you shouldn't use such language around her."

"What? Me?" Dean took the pan off the stove and looked like he couldn't believe that Cas accused him of anything.

"There's no other place she could have heard it" Cas retorted with a smug half-smile and a pointed tilt of his head.

"Well-" Dean poured pasta into the plastic, white colander in the sink, getting rid of the boiling water. "Food's almost ready."

"Grace, have you washed your hands?" Cas looked down under the table. His little girl sighed excessively, dropped one of her dolls to the floor, stood up from under the furniture and walked out into the hallway with determination in her steps. "Wait, I'll come with you!" He had barely stood up before he heard a thump from where Grace had disappeared.

"Dammit, daddy" she said and Cas hurried after her. She was laying on her back with her feet over Cas' bag, apparently after tripping over it. "Get your crap up off the floor."

"Grace Mary Winchester! We don't use such words!" he admonished and picked her up, terrified that she would have hurt herself. She started to get rather heavy.

"Daddy do" she sassed back.

"Yes, well, he's the only one who do" Cas said pensively. "And he shouldn't." He carried her into the bathroom. Her new princess doll dangled from the tight grip of her right hand. When he sat her down on her small, red footstool in front of the sink, she began pushing at him, still clenching the doll in her hand.

"We can wash ourself!" she insisted, pushing him towards the door.

"Okay, okay" he surrendered. "Tell me if you need me." He watched her drop the doll to the tiles and reach up to turn on the water. Reluctantly, he left.

"She might be a sass mouth, but she _does_ have a point" Dean said with a grin when Cas returned to his chair in the kitchen.

"Don't make it worse for yourself" Cas warned him. He started to get hungry now and he was not to be messed with when he was running on an empty stomach. It helped slightly when Dean placed the food on the table and the wonderful smell reached him. He turned his eyes out towards the bathroom door, wondering what was taking Grace so long. Being the worrying parent, he stood up again and walked out of the kitchen to check on her. He knocked a few times on the door before he leaned closer.

"Grace? Honey? What's going on in there?" Through the door he could hear his daughter shutting off the water, followed by her 'adult' voice.

"Nothing, just washing my Penis" she replied. Cas could have sworn that all the colour disappeared from his face. He felt a cold sweat coming on. Dean laughed behind him, but as soon as Cas turned towards the sound, he stopped, chuckling and coughing instead.

"I forgot to tell you" he said, putting down plates on the table. "She named her doll today. Guess she must've heard you last night." By now, Cas was probably whiter than a sheet, at the thought.

"Oh my God."

They ate. Macaroni and hot-dogs. Dean and Grace babbled on like crazy. Cas was quiet, trying to shake off the feeling of being a bad parent. How could he let his daughter hear all of Dean's worst vocabulary? Dean noticed that something was nagging him so after lunch he asked Cas for some help out under the soft blue sky in hopes that he would stop thinking for a moment. Grace played with her dolls and drew pictures on the porch while her fathers carried out the big, plastic dining table from the garage. They placed it under the big tree with the red ribbons around its stem; Dean had tied a third the day Cas had moved in.

"We need some lights" Cas thought out loud with his hands on his hips, looking up at the lower branches hanging a few meters above the table.

"What? It's June" Dean objected. "We don't need any lights." Cas nodded to himself.

"Yes. Strings of lights. Up there." He made swaying motions with one hand up towards the branches. "Hanging down a little. It'll look nice. I'll write it down and buy some tomorrow." He stopped himself. What was he thinking? He didn't want to go into town.

"I don't think they'll care if we have decorations or not. As long as the grill's working."

"Or maybe you could go tomorrow?" Cas continued, ignoring Dean. "Strings of lights. Not that kind with different colours. They must be white. But I guess if they don't have white ones, you can get the coloured ones. As long as they don't look cheap. And we need new clothespins."

Dean drew a deep breath, raking his fingers back through his hair. He followed Cas' stare and looked up at the branches.

"You need anything else, Oscar Wilde?" he teased.

"Yes, in fact. Og, son of Og" Cas replied nonchalantly. "I need another pack of sugar, if you want that apple pie on Saturday." Dean's smug expression was quickly replaced by eager.

"Yeah! Yeah, sure. I'll go tomorrow."

They took out the chairs and the grill, covered it all up and straightened the clothesline before they carried a reluctant Grace inside the house. The sky had started to darken and the grey clouds began to worry Cas. A thunderstorm rolled over them that night, pulling at forests and fighting with lakes. Cas tossed and turned next to Dean, sweating. He dreamed of being trapped, stuck in a darkness. Shadows with evil grins lurked in every corner and he couldn't get out.


	2. Ain't done much healing

Cas slept in the following morning. Longer than usual anyway. The clock had sneaked by half past ten when the nightmare finally released its hold on him. His eyes had glued themselves shut, full of grit and hard to force open. Dean wasn't next to him. He was alone. The sheet under him was scrunched up in waves and damp from sweat. He should wash up. Friday was a good day to get some cleaning and laundry done.

Straining himself, he blinked up at the light a few times, seriously considering rolling over on his side and go back to sleep. But he reluctantly pulled the cover off of him and threw his legs over the edge of the bed and out into the luke-warm room. The house was quiet. Grace hadn't woken him up with her eight o'clock cry. Dean must have dealth with her.

He pulled on his comfortable sweatpants and zipped his dark blue hoodie halfway up his bare chest, concealing his imperfections, before he made his way downstairs. The floor was a litte cold under the soles of his feet. It felt nice. He heard his own heart beat in his ears. It was so quiet. The house lay in complete silence and the rooms were empty. Cas casually glanced around the kitchen and the livingroom before walking with quick steps down the hall to Grace's room, finding it abandoned as well. He fixed her bed spread and returned to the hall.

A low growl came from the starving pit of his stomach and drew him back to the kitchen. For a few minutes he searched for something quick to sink his teeth into without having to cook. The leftover half of a banana ended up atop some cereals and yoghurt. He leaned against the counter by the window and looked out over the garden as he ate. This was one of his favourite spots in the house. From here he always saw the sunlight glisten over everything. His own little oasis. A place where he could forget everything; where he could forget all the unpleasant things he hadn't forgotten already.

He looked down and flipped through the morning's newspaper and accidentally read words he didn't want to read. Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he quickly let his eyes shift focus from the horror stories the papers were spewing. A yellow post-it note was stuck to the countertop. A mere five words were written on it. Dean's sloppy handwriting.

" **We are out. Back soon.** "

He took another spoonful of yoghurt soaked cereals, chewed and left the spoon in the bowl as his fingers gently touched the letters Dean had written. The paper was dry, almost rough under his fingertips. The lines of the pencil Dean had used were vaguely noticeable. Like tiny trenches in a bright yellow field.

Cas' eyes shifted up and out across the sunlit garden again. The double doors to the garage stood wide open. Something seemed to be moving inside and he peered his eyes slightly. When he couldn't figure out what was going on he took his breakfast in one hand and went out to take a closer look.

"Son of a bitch" he heard someone mutter as he got closer to the garage.

"What's this? Cirque du Soleil?" He scooped up the last of the yoghurt and put the empty bowl down on a stack of boxes huddled next to a metallic green bandsaw covered in soft-looking sawdust.

"Uh- Yes-! Yeah, hi!" Dean almost fell off the ladder he was climbing on. He seemed to have been reaching for something high up on a shelf right under the ridge of the ceiling. But when he heard Cas he flinched and pushed the... what ever it was, back in its place. Cas could barely contain a laugh. When he saw Grace sitting on Dean's dark blue parka in the sawdust on the floor, his smile faded and was replaced by a frown. She was playing with two pieces of wood which Dean had drawn halfhearted, happy faces on. Cas picked her up, held her with one arm and dusted Dean's jacket off by waving it around right above the ground with his other hand.

"Do you want her to get splinters?" he asked rhetorically. "Or- som kind of-... poisoning!"

Dean snickered. He waved at Cas' worries with one hand and a smile. He furrowed his brows as he stepped down from the ladder.

"She's fine" he said heedlessly. "She's my girl!" Cas wasn't convinced. He looked at Grace and held her with both arms. She sucked at her tiny, pouty lower lip and scrunched up her face thoughtlessly.

"Don't forget to go into town today" he reminded Dean. "Lights and sugar. Remember?"

"Done and done." Dean wiped his hands off on his jeans. "Me and Grace took the Impala" he said lightheartedly as if Cas wasn't at all scrunching his nose at him. Dean hadn't driven that old thing for as long as Cas had lived with him. When he thought of it, Cas hadn't ever even heard the noise of the engine. A car like that must have a big roaring sound, he imagined. "You were drooling all over our bedstuff." Dean's face burst into a wide, self-satisfied grin, teeth flashing.

Cas felt his cheeks heat up with embarrassment. He pretended not to notice.

"You two look just like each other." Dean nodded at Cas and their newest family member.

"Well- Where are they-? The- The stuff you bought" Cas asked, blinking his eyes repeatedly to get his mind back on track. Dean was probably just teasing him, but he couldn't help but think that he always thought Grace looked more like Dean rather than himself.

Dean shifted his eyes towards a plastic bag on the dry ground outside by the door where the grass had been worn away. Cas handed their daughter over to Dean who took her and nuzzled his face against her neck to make her laugh. It worked. A bubbly sound escaped her. It felt bittersweet. Maybe Dean was the better parent.

"I'm going to get a little cleaning done" Cas said. "And prepare some of the food for tomorrow."

"Don't be such a grump" Dean said with a half-smile and an arched eyebrow. Grace smiled at Cas as well. Her lips were pouty and glossy wet with drool. "C'mere!"

He half-reluctantly moved his legs when Dean gestured with his head for him to come closer. Dean's free arm reached around his shoulders and pulled him in.

"Dean-"

"Quit your naggin', Cas" he interrupted, seemingly trying to look stern. "Gimmie some smooches."

An impatiently annoyed sigh left Cas' throat but was soon replaced by a content one when he let Dean give him a warm, stomach-fluttering kiss. Grace giggled between their chests. All too soon Dean's lips disappeared as Cas was pulled away backwards. Dean had hooked his fingers inside the back of Cas' t-shirt neckline. He looked smug, with a wide grin slapped on his face. Cas almost stumbled.

"God dammit, Cas! That's enough fraternizing in front of the kid" Dean exclaimed jokingly, as if Cas was being inappropriate and clingy.

Cas turned and stepped over the doorstep. He picked up the plastic bag on the way out.

"Get a paper one next time" he called, waving the bag over his head as he left the garage. He heard the annoying, stern tone in his own voice. Maybe he really was a grump, like Dean said. How did Dean even put up with him?

"Yeah, I know, Cas. Nature, recycling and stuff."

"And don't put her down in the dust again!" he admonished over his shoulder, raising his voice some more.

His eyes swept over the garden. Their parked cars on the gravel beyond the lawn to the left. The Impala stood there too, like a forty-eight year old, shiny, metallic black insult against the peaceful, green scenery. Then, grass and more grass. The yellow, handmade hives on their short, wooden legs. Still unused. Trees. The pier reaching out on the glistening lake.

"Yeah, yeah!" he heard Dean reply with a laugh behind him.

The apple pie didn't take too long to make. He had made quite a few pies over the last two years, all because Dean craved them. But this time he wanted it to be ready and fresh out of the oven by the time Dean's family arrived. So he placed it in the refrigerator for now.

Through the course of the day Cas vacuumed the house, cleaned the windows, prepared food and did some laundry. In the late afternoon when he took the white wash out of the machine, his breath suddenly hitched and refused to return to normal. Dean's bright red boxers had somehow slipped into the white sheets, shirts and socks, leaving pink stains on everything.

Immediately he rushed to the washstand and frantically tried to scrub the pink off. Nothing happened. The pink stains remaind, staring at him with mockery. He would never be able to wash it out. There was nothing else to do. He got a strong urge to just throw everything away.

His eyes started to burn without warning, his lungs pressed themselves together and he had to hold himself up by leaning against the washing machine. A suffocating anxiousness flowed through his veins like tar. His head hurt and he willed himself not to cry. He couldn't even get the laundry done right.

He looked down at the ruined shirt in his shaking hands. The anxiety was all of a sudden accompanied by frustrated anger. He straightened his back, tousled the shirt together and threw it down onto the floor with all his strength. Then he stared at it with widened, wild eyes for a second before he involuntarily started chipping for breath, sinking down with his back against the laundry basket.

When he was too tired to cry anymore he left the messy basement without giving it a second glance. Stiffly he walked up the stairs, wiped angrily at his wet face and crashed on the couch in the livingroom.

The sky had started to darken slightly outside the windows. The house was quiet. Dean must have put Grace to bed already. Between dirty countertops and dusty windowsills, Cas hadn't had time to think about that.

He turned on the TV and flipped through the channels too fast, still slightly mad, bored, tired, searching for that one interesting program that might be able to get his attention in a split second before he would press the "next" button again. His thumb on the remote control suddenly came to an abrupt halt when images of a colorful, screaming crowd appeared on the screen in front of him. They had tears and wide smiles on their faces. Red letter balloons floated in the air above them, reading "LOVE WINS". A voice with a professional news anchor vibe said " _President Obama had this to say after the Supreme Court's decision_ -" before the images of the jumping crowd cut to a video from a press conference with the president. He stood behind a lectern with both hands calmly holding on to its edges. Two microphones were angled up at him. The president gave the cameras and reporters in front of him a thoughtful look before he opened his mouth. Cas had stopped breathing entirely.

" _This morning the Supreme Court recognized that the constitution guarantees marriage equality_." He paused for a few seconds, as if to let the news sink in. It didn't for Cas. It hit him like a ton of bricks and he still didn't quite understand what he had just heard. All he could think of was that he had the same colored tie as the one mister president was wearing. " _In doing so they have reaffirmed that all americans are entitled to equal protection of the law_."

"Dammit, it's cold in here" Dean said somewhere behind him. "What'd you do to the thermostat settings? You trying to freeze me to death, huh, Cas? Get the insurance money and take a little French leave? That's the plan?"

Cas didn't hear.

"What're you watching?" Dean asked as he came up from behind. He leaned over the back of the couch and draped himself over Cas' shoulders like a blanket. The news consumed all of Cas' attention.

"- _should be treated equally, regardless of who they are or who they love_."

"Cas, you got your ears on?"

Cas didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. The ruined laundry had slipped away somewhere among the less important files in the back of his head. He could feel his mouth hanging open slightly. Too many feelings tried to take control over him at once.

"Hmm?" Dean nuzzled his nose at the back of Cas' neck for a moment before he released his grip and moved around the couch to fall down next to him. He scooched down in his seat with his legs up and looked at the TV. Cas willed himself to shift his wide stare in order to steal a glance of Dean's reaction.

"- _will end the uncertainty hundreds of thousands of same sex couples face from not knowing whether their marriage, legitimate in the eyes of one state, will remain if they decide to move or even visit another_."

Dean's expression faltered and for a second he had an obscure look on his face. But then he glanced sideways at Cas and quickly pushed all his sudden emotions away, as if being overjoyed had to be a big secret. Cas wasn't sure if he dared to open his mouth about this. Marriage wasn't something they had discussed, and doing it just because they could didn't feel like a good enough reason. Not that Cas didn't want to, they just hadn't ever even come close to the subject. It never seemed possible. And Dean didn't quite feel like the marrying type, for some reason. He thought of the first night he had spent in the house. The evening when he had caught Dean - still a stranger to Cas - looking at a secret ring in a box in a drawer by his bedside.

"Do you realize what this means?" he finally said faintly. His throat felt dried out and gravelly.

The silence was pulled out into long stretches of dense time between every sentence they spoke to each other. The TV showed the screaming and jumping crowd once more. Cas had goosebumps everywhere and his body vibrated, flustered.

"Shut your mouth" Dean said, flicking Cas' seriousness away. "This lion can't be tamed." He smirked his usual half-smile but it somehow looked a little too automatic. Of course he was going to joke it off. Cas was too tired to argue.

"Don't be silly, Dean. If this is going to work we have to _talk_ to each other" Cas insisted.

"Exactly" he said, suddenly serious.

"No. I didn't mean like that. We are _not_ talking about _that_."

Dean stayed silent, merely clenching his jaw. He had proved his point. They were both still at that stage where none of them felt really comfortable talking about exactly everything. Emotions, memories, the past...

"Fine then..." Cas shook his head, dejected. "You know-" He shrugged his shoulders, once again reluctantly accepting the fact that Dean didn't want to talk about his feelings. "Being your-..." He bit his tongue and thought about it for a second. What were they exactly? He assumed the adult word for their relationship was most appropriate, but it still sounded so boring. "-your ' _partner_ '... is fine."

He raised his arm and pointed the remote at the TV screen, changing the channel. Some bad romantic comedy where the guy chases the girl at the airport to tell her that he loves her at the very last second.

"I mean, It does sound like we're dating, but-..." His train of thought shifted slightly. "Either that or we're robbing a bank. Or running a legal firm." He could hear his own voice dripping with bitterness.

"Obviously we're elite squad detectives, investigating vicious and gory felonies" Dean added, seemingly steering the conversation elsewhere. "I think we've got some handcuffs upstairs, if y'know what I mean."

Their eyes met and Dean winked one at Cas, like he always did, flashing his teeth.

"We could light some candles. Maybe I'll put on my special boxers. I know you like all that romantic crap."

"Of course, Dean" he said with an exhalation. "I should have known that romance to you means changing your underwear."

Dean snickerad lowly at him before he stood up.

"You coming?" he asked. He looked down at Cas with the question written all over his angled features. "I'm serious."

Cas drew a deep breath, exhaled and gave the TV one last look. The news had changed to a commercial for some washing powder. A nineteen-fifties housewife stood tall by her sink, washing up the dishes, wearing her finest Sunday dress. Cas snorted bitterly before he clicked the remote at the scene and watched the screen turn black as it disappeared into itself. Dean reach out a hand towards him and Cas gave in, trying to bite down on his lips to stop a smile from spreading.

The next morning Cas got out of bed early. Dean snored, stretched out on his stomach with his left arm on his partner's side of the bed. Cas still felt glowing and warm from Dean's caressing hands, loving lips and worshiping tongue when he skipped down the stairs and towards the kitchen.

When they were good they slept intertwined, even though Dean's body was too hot for Cas to endure for too long. But he always willed himself to stay put, pressed close. The previous night had been a good one, despite Cas' bad day. Its memory was still very much present in his body. Dean had softly coaxed Cas into it like only Dean could. His sweet words had slowly turned into deep groans and hoarse dirty talk in Cas' ear. Sparks of remembered pleasue shivered down his spine and he smiled to himself at the thought.

He took the pie out of the refrigerator and turned on the oven. He picked the spare ribs out of its brown, spicy marinade and layed them up on a plate for Dean to grill later. Now and then when he accidentally touched himself he thought of Dean's fingertips on his skin.

In a comical desperation of an attempt he turned on the radio to get his mind on something else as he cleaned a handful of potatoes in the sink. It almost worked and for a moment Cas only felt the cold water trickle down over his hands. The stupid grin on his face refused to go away. He barely noticed when he slowly started to sway his hips from side to side in pace with Michael Bublé who sang about fallen stars and getaway cars.

" _And you play it coy but it's kinda cute_ " he suddenly caught himself humming along. He felt so good. " _Ah, when you smile at me you know exactly what you do_."

He cut the potatoes up with some carrots and beetroots into shreds. They ended up in a pan and went straight into the oven. His feet gradually took bigger and smoother dance steps across the kitchen floor. At least it felt like dancing; he wasn't sure if it looked like it, but he didn't care.

" _So, laa laa, laa laa, la, la, la. So, laa laa, laa laa, la, la, la_..."

The song increased in key and Cas couldn't contain himself any longer, bursting out in the most heartfelt solo dance.

" _And in this craaazy life, and through these craaazy times, it's you, it's you, you make me sing_ -..."

Someone cleared their throat behind Cas' back. The sound caused him to stop and spin around. Dean stood on the doorstep to the kitchen with a yawning Grace in his arms. They had matching bedheads in a dark blond shade and the grit in their eyes could not be mistaken.

"Looking good" Dean teased. "Shake that, Fred Astair!"

Cas blushed with embarrassement.

"I'm sorry" he said, feeling flustered. "I didn't mean to wake you. I'm just-"

"Yeah, well, you scallywag...! Time to get up anyway!" Dean rocked Grace back and forth slowly. She almost seemed to have fallen asleep with her head against her father's shoulder. "Heard we're celebrating someone's birthday." He gave Cas a teeth-flashing smile. "Even though it ain't really his day for another two weeks."

"Yes. What's all that about?" Cas asked, playing along with a pointed arch of an eyebrow. At the same time he actually did wonder why they didn't do this birthday nonsense on his real birthday. What was Dean up to?

"Looks like y'got it all under control here" Dean said with a questioning frown at the messy counter. Plastic bowls, whisks, cutting boards, knives, casseroles and measuring cups crowded together on the countertop.

Cas ignored the ironic tone in Dean's voice.

"Thank you." He smiled.

"I thought you were a neat guy."

"If you could fix the table and chairs and lights outside, that would be great, Dean. And give Grace a bath."

Dean murmured something to himself and turned on his heel in the doorway, still with Grace in his arms. The two disappeared for a while and a few moments later, when Cas had finished all the aromatic dishes topped with chive and basil, he went to look for them. He found them on the floor of Grace's yellow room; Grace bundled up in a big towel, and Dean with his legs crossed. He played a slightly comforting country tune on his old guitar.

" _Then you reached down and touched me, and lifted me up with you, so I believe it was a road I was meant to ride_..."

His singing voice probably wouldn't have won American Idol, but Cas wasn't exactly the right person to judge. At least he heard that Dean tried his best. It was intimate and deep and warm. Brave, honest. Cas would never have dared to open his mouth and use his voice the way Dean did.

" _I'm like a soldier getting over the war... Like a young man getting over his craaazy days_ -..." Dean stopped singing when he caught sight of Cas.

"Music lesson?"

"We can't all be prancing musical queens" he responded, arching a brow with a half-smile and a knowing glance at Cas. "The kid needs to know her rock 'n' roll." With a rough hand he tousled the towel on Grace's little head, making her giggle.

"And the pie in the oven needs to know it's being watched."

No reaction. Dean kept cuddling with Grace on the floor, not giving Cas as much as a look.

"Dean?" Cas tried. "I said I just put the pie in the oven" he repeated. "Could you be so kind and go watch it." It wasn't a question.

Dean chuckled.

"You got a bun in the oven?" he snickered jokingly.

"No, Dean. A pie."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean put one strong hand on his knee as he rose to his feet. "I'm on it." Cas got a pat on the shoulder as Dean walked by and disappeared behind him with the guitar.

"Well then! How do you want your hair, Gracie?" Cas asked as he looked through Grace's wardrobe for something to dress her in.

"I look good! I look good" she singsonged, swaying from side to side. Where she sat, wrapped up in the giant, white towel on the floor, she looked like a marshmallow.

"Yes, you do, honey. But how do you want your hair? For the party." Cas found her beautiful, white sundress down in a drawer and looked at it for a second before he folded it again and put it back down. She would only ruin it if she wore it all afternoon out in the garden. "Daddy could do something really pretty with braids and ribbons."

"Not you?" She sounded worried. Cas smiled.

"No, your other daddy."

"Thank God!" she exclaimed dramatically.

Cas pulled out a red dress and held it up, inspecting it with peering eyes. It was slightly simpler in the design, but it had a more washable material.

"What about this one?" he asked, showing it to Grace. She pulled the towel tighter around her head with her tiny hands, so that only her face showed.

"I want- I want a cape" she said. "A superhero cape!"

"But you don't have a cape" Cas tried softly, smiling. He still had his bets on the red dress.

"I. Want. A. Cape."

"Grace-"

"I want a cape!" She was unwavering.

"Dammit, Cas!" was heard from the other end of the hallway outside of Grace's wide open bedroom door. "Give the kid a cape!"

"Don't undermine my authority like that, Dean!" he replied down the hall with his voice raised slightly. Eventually he drew a deep breath and exhaled. He stood up, placed the red dress neatly over a chair and stretched down his hands towards Grace. "Let's see if we can find you a cape then" he said, surrendering.

Grace put her small hands on the floor as support and stood up to hold on to his hands. She grinned and in that moment she looked so much like Dean.

Swiftly Cas pulled the red dress over her head and picked her up in his arms. She tugged a little at his hair as he carried her to the kitchen where Dean sat on a chair with the guitar in his lap, strumming something.

"Do you think you have the capacity to handle both Grace and the pie while I look for a cape?" Cas asked as he put Grace down on the floor. "And if you could do something with her hair-"

"Relax, Cas. I got it."

Cas remembered one particular table cloth that possibly could suffice for the purpose. Quickly he headed upstairs and managed to reach the hatch in the ceiling without having to jump for the handle more than once. The attic was just as cold and solitary as always, and he almost put his head straight through a cobweb when he made his way up the retractable ladder. He turned over two mattresses and went through four full boxes before he found what he was looking for.

On his way back to the ladder he passed by a narrow table, hiding in a corner. An old shoebox stood atop it and a phtograph peeked out slightly from under the cardboard lid. Cas couldn't stop himself from pulling it out. Two young men leaned on each other in a very boyishly manly way with one arm around the other's shoulders. They wore military outfits and posed casually infront of a big tent. Dufflebags and gear were neatly packed by their boot-clad feet in the dirt. One of them was Dean. A younger Dean. A completely different Dean compared to the man Cas was living with now. Why did a photo of this kind of Dean exist? Why did it look like he was in a war zone?

The other boy in the photo looked more like a beefy fisherman, dark blue hat cockeyedly. He had a subtly smug look on his face and Cas didn't like it. Hardly thinking, Cas shoved the photograph down in a sidepocket on his sweatpants before he continued down the ladder. The light blue cloth was clenched in his fist.

When he returned to the kitchen with the provisional cape for Grace, he heard Dean hum something. He couldn't exactly make out the tune, but he found Dean on the same chair where Cas had left him, but now with Grace bouncing on his lap. His guitar stood leaned against the edge of the kitchen table.

"Do you know what little girls, like you, are made of?" Dean asked, securing a braid at the back of Grace's head. "Sugar and spice and all things nice" he rhymed. Grace shook her little head and made it hard for Dean to finish his masterpiece.

"No!" she exclaimed. "They're made of blood and bones."

"Heeey" Cas said sceptically as he entered the kitchen. He sank down and sat on his heels in front of them. "When did you get so morbid?"

Grace grimaced and Cas was just about to rebuke her when Ellen suddenly stepped in with her hands on her hips. Her shoulder length, brown hair had a few almost golden highlights and the crinkles at her eyes resembled Dean's, although hers were deeper than his. She always reminded Cas of a mother bear, which suited grumpy, bearded, old Bobby perfectly. He was saddened by the thought that he hadn't been there for their wedding. The occasion had taken place a few years before Cas had returned and reconnected, but he was sure that Bobby in a suit must have been quite a sight. He had seen photographs but it just wasn't quite the same as experiencing it would have been. All these missed events made Cas feel a bit like an outcast in the family, even after having been a part of it for two years now.

He rose up from the floor and awkwardly brushed his hands off on his sweatpants, for some reason. The floor was spotlessly cleaned. He could feel his face turn warm, but Ellen only seemed to have eyes for Grace.

"Hello, Ellen. I didn't know you were here already" he said with a lump in his throat. He wasn't at all ready to recieve guests. He hadn't even dressed himself yet. Casually he glanced down at Dean on the chair to check his outfit. Dean looked amazing, wearing washed out jeans and a red, white and black shirt with the sleeves unfolded to reveal his strong, tanned forearms. This was his man. Cas' man. He blushed at the thought.

"Don't stress, Castiel" she said. "It's just me and Bobby." She nodded out towards the garden. "We just thought we'd come and see if you needed any help."

"That's nice of you." He was still a little embarrassed that he wasn't done with everything already. "But you don't have to-"

"What he means is-" Dean interrupted, still bouncing Grace on one knee. "A few extra hands wouldn't hurt."

"Well, since you're already here... If it's no problem-"

"It's no problem!" Ellen assured with a wide smile. "We're family!" Cas blushed even harder. He almost felt his eyes filling with tears but he blinked it away.

"If you want you can see if there's anything outside that needs some attention" he suggested. "And if you could take Grace with you-..."

Ellen nodded once and lifted Grace up in her arms. They both giggled and Cas handed Ellen the table cloth he had brought down.

"Cape!" Grace exclaimed. Cas rolled his eyes with a half-smile.

"She's got a memory like a freckin' elephant" Dean said and rested his right foot up on his left knee.

The two left the kitchen and Cas gazed after them for a second.

"Good thing we've got Ellen."

"Don't get too comfortable, Dean" Cas reminded. "When she's a teenager I will make sure you're the one who buys her tampons and talks to her about boys."

A smokey sent reached Cas and he turned towards the oven. He froze in his steps. The glass was vaguely tinted but he could still see the apple pie, burned and black as charcoal where it rested on the oven grid. His heart started to pound uneasily. He rushed to the oven, sank down on his knees and opened the door. The heat hit him in the face and almost knocked him backwards.

"Dean!" he exclaimed accusingly. "Why didn't you watch the pie?" He took it out with two green cloths. "Look at it!" Dean didn't say a word as Cas held it out towards him and carelessly poked holes in the black, hard crust with a fork, messing it up even more. What did it matter; it was already ruined. "You're the one who wanted it! And now it's ruined!" He continued to stabb the pie. Tears started to burn behind his eyes and his voice croaked. "I can't do anything right! I'm useless! Why the hell do I even try?!"

"C'mon, Cas. Calm down" Dean said carefully. He looked a little shocked at Cas' sudden outburst. "It ain't the end of the world."

"Are you even capable of keeping a single thought in that thick head of yours?!" Cas continued loudly. He didn't mean to take it out on Dean, but he couldn't stop himself. "Do you have _any_ information stored in there at all, or is it just-... _blank_?! Can you even think for yourself?!" He threw the pie on the countertop.

"I know grizzly bears can break bowling balls with their jaws. And I know Samuel L. Jackson has said 'motherfucker' one hundred an' seventy-one times on screen."

Cas stared him down.

"Are you joking right now?!"

"I ain't gonna fight you, Cas."

The chair Dean sat on scraped against the floor when he stood up and came towards Cas with his arms stretched out. But Cas backed away from him. His face was probably striped with tears by now. It felt like it anyway. Swollen and moist and scrunched up in despair and frustration.

"You angry with me?" Dean kept coming closer until Cas stood with his lower back against the kitchen counter.

"What in hell do you think?" The suddenly very strong presence of Dean's body smothered Cas' loud anger into faint complaints.

"A simple 'yes' or 'no' would've been fine."

"But- How hard can it be to just watch a pie? I told you to watch the pie, Dean! What would your mother have-"

"You shut your mouth."

The argument slowed down when Cas realized what he had just said.

"This is not working-"

"Stop it" Dean said warningly. "We're not gonna do this right now. There are people out there." He pointed with his whole arm past Cas' face, at the garden outside of the kitchen window.

They came to an abrupt halt and Cas started to break. The warmth from Dean's arm next to Cas and the heat from his torso started to impose on Cas and loosen him up. He forgot what he was going to say. They just stared at each other. Eventually Dean lowered his arm, took that last step and touched Cas. The counter dug into his lower back.

"If you don't stop fighting with me I'll bend you over and slam into you right here and now" he warned with a low, rough, greedy, animal-like wisper in Cas' ear.

The fury was quickly replaced by a fire lighting somewhere deep down in Cas. Dean hadn't spoken to him like that in a long time - not even last night. It surprised him that he still reacted by getting the strongest urge to sacrifice himself to Dean. But he didn't want to surrender now. He was too upset, too angry with Dean. He pushed at Dean and turned his back towards him to break the spellbinding charm. Flustered, he fiddled with the ugly pie on the countertop.

"I just think it's best I do everything myself, and you- just-... don't butt into other people's business, Dean" he admonished with exhausted irritation. Dean was impossible sometimes, like a really tall child. Cas could feel the wrinkle between his own dark eyebrows. To be honest, when he moved in with Dean and Grace he hadn't planned on raising both of them.

Suddenly he felt Dean press up against his back. The bulge in his jeans was prominent on Cas' ass.

"Oh- I'll butt in, alright" he said lowly with his lips close behind Cas' right ear.

Cas could feel his whole body respond to Dean. He suddenly felt heavy and warm and out of breath. Dean slowly eased him into turning to face him again and Cas didn't resist. His lips felt like liquid bliss and tasted like honey and Cas melted against him, leaning into his embrace. Dean hooked his fingers inside and carefully pulled at the elastic waistband only to coax down the sweatpants. He pulled out slightly to get them past Cas' erection. A small moan left Cas when Dean accidentally scraped his fingers against him on the way down before he let the sweatpants fall. He continued the torture by cupping Cas with one hand, gliding, rubbing. Dean pressed himself as close to Cas as he possibly could while still keeping his hand on Cas' hard-on. His lips couldn't silence every sound that left Cas, but he sure tried.

"Guessing you don't give a hoot about this right now, but-" Dean said, out of the blue. "Rest of the family'll be here any minute. You should get dressed." With one arched eyebrow and an amused smirk on his lips he glanced down at the bulge in Cas' briefs, and the sweatpants down around his ankles. An annoying heat spread up Cas' throat.

"But I-"

"I'll clean up here" Dean assured and Cas chose to believe him.


	3. Half a family

After a quick shower, getting dressed and downing two painkillers, Cas felt a little better. He offhandedly tried to dry his hair with a towel as he walked around the house, willing himself to remember if anything else needed to be done. But everything seemed finished. He placed a record on his old turntable and opened the windows to let the soft music flood out to their guests on the front lawn.

" _When your body's had enough of me and I'm lying flat out on the floor... When you think I've loved you all I can, I'm gonna love you a little bit more..._ "

The kitchen looked decent once again; Dean had even taken out the food to the table and started the grill. Bobby and Sam sat on two chairs next to him and seemed utterly consumed by their conversation. Ellen leaned on the table, talking to Jessica who just put down her and Sam's daughter Abigail, letting her play with Grace on a blanket in the grass. The sun threw a warm layer of light over all of them. It was the perfect picture of a happy family. Cas hesitated for a while on the porch, watching them. He couldn't recall having moments like this with his family.

"Yeah, but that new so-called rifle of his is no match" he heard Bobby say in all seriousness, with equal parts annoyance and amusement in his rugged voice. "It's practically a toy gun. What's he gonna do? Go up to a moose, aim and say 'BAM', hoping he'll scare it to death?"

The two Winchester brothers laughed and Ellen rolled her eyes at her husband.

"You know it all comes down to how you use the thing, right?" she said impliedly with a sly smile.

Bobby did that facial expression of his where he clenched his jaw and his whole face sunk in on itself in defeat. A typical old-man look.

"That's what men with small guns say!"

"Well, maybe if you actually got your big behind off the couch and out in the woods once in a while, you'd know what to do with yours" she replied calmly, sipping a glass of something.

Not even Jessica could keep herself from laughing now.

Cas smiled to himself. Ellen and Bobby's bickering was always a great source of amusement to all of them, and so full of love at the same time. Not at all like his and Dean's dispute in the kitchen half an hour ago. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't even recall what they had been arguing about.

"What you doin', Cas?"

His eyes met Dean's shimering green orbs across the lawn. The man was waving him over from behind the steamy grill. Everyone was looking at him now.

"C'mere!"

Obediently he moved his legs forward until he reached the group, coming to a halt by the grill. Everyone had resumed their conversations with one another. As he flipped a steak, Dean shifted his weight to his right leg and leaned slightly closer to Cas, almost imperceptibly, touching the back of his hand. _I'm here for you. I've got your back._

"So, Cas. Twenty-nine. How does it feel?" Ellen asked.

Cas moved around and sat down by the table, opposite of the older woman. He tried to relax, taking a deep breath.

"Oh no, Ellen, don't you dare. I'm twenty-eight for another two weeks."

"Glad you could all come today" Dean interjected, talking to everyone. He took a gulp of his beer, turning a few spare ribs over on the grill grate, simultaneously.

"Yeah, but where've you got Jo?" Sam asked with a questioning look at Ellen.

"My daughter?" She snorted. "You know, I'm not sure I have one anymore" she answered jokingly with a bitter undertone. "She's started seeing this guy and now I've barely seen her for a week."

"I bet it'll be different once school starts again" Jessica added. She sat down next to Ellen at the end of the table, barely taking her eyes off of her own daughter.

"You're damn right" Ellen assured.

"How is she then?"

"When I ask her, it's 'fine'. That seems to be the general feeling of teenagers these days." She shook her head in disbelief. "School, war, famine, lottery wins. It's all fine."

Cas had stopped listening. He tried to smother a loud sigh of relief. Every time Joanna Beth had come with her mother to visit them, she had been all over Dean, like the hormone-fueled teenage girl she was. She even called Dean "sex on a plate" once. He knew that he was being silly, that he had nothing to worry about. But it still churned around in his chest when he thought about Dean with someone else. Anyone else.

"God dammit!" Bobby exclaimed.

Cas looked up and found that the older man had spilled beer on his shirt.

"Bobby Singer! Language!" Ellen admonished him. But it was too late.

"Only daddy says 'God dammit'!" Grace said defiantly in her most determined little voice.

Cas scrunched his eyebrows at Dean who flashed his teeth apologetically.

"Who's hungry?" he asked, pliers in one hand, beer in the other.

Moments later everyone leaned back in their seats, breathing deeply from too much grilled meat followed by microwaved cinnamon buns with ice-cream for dessert. It wasn't the menu he had envisioned.

As everyone sank deeper into their seats, Cas was the only one who wouldn't allow himself to sit down just yet. He piled all the dirty plates atop each other. Porcelain and glass clinked together. A breez played in the strings of lights and the tree's foliage above their heads. Birds chirped and sang. The warm sunshine made everything glisten peacefully. A chair scraped slightly on the grass. A satisfied sigh left Bobby's rugged throat as he unbuttoned his jeans and freed his full stomach.

"Bobby Singer" Ellen said as sternly as she could muster after such a feast. "You button those pants right now. No one wants to see that."

"Then don't look." He shrugged and looked proud of himself.

"It's called 'being respectful'. Even the kids know not to take their clothes off at a party."

"Don't say that too loud" Dean scoffed. "Grace probably would."

"Be glad you're not stuck with the ball and chain" Bobby said, raising one of his bushy eyebrows at Dean. Cas' shoulders sank and the air went out of him.

"Hey!" Ellen said with an offended tone, but her face had a teasing smile. "Don't pretend I'm that horrible to live with."

"C'mere" Dean said confidently with his rough voice, low enough for only Cas to hear. He patted the backrest of the chair next to him and pulled at Cas with that invisible force of his. "Save some fun for later."

He obeyed, thinking of the one-sided conversations with doctor Mills. If he wanted to learn how to relax he could as well listen to Dean from time to time. Ceremoniously he abandoned the dishes and sank back down on his chair. It felt like he sat considerably closer to Dean than he had done a minute ago.

"You see, we survived without that damn pie. It works just wingin' it" Dean said lightheartedly. "Love me some improvised dessert!"

Cas didn't find anything impromptu funny or exciting in the slightest. He needed to be prepared; he needed to know that everything would go according to plan.

"Don't I look like a man to you?" Bobby continued to bicker with Ellen. He didn't give her the slightest chance to respond. "Then don't boss me around, woman."

Dean suddenly spread his strong, jeans-clad legs slightly and his knee touched Cas' under the table. It sent an electric, involuntary shiver up through him. No one seemed to notice.

"Honey, Abby looks a little tired." Jessica picked up her snoozing daughter from the blanket on the grass and cradled her in her arms.

Cas stood up so fast his chair almost tipped over backwards. His body itched from sitting still.

"Put her in Grace's bed" he offered. "It's almost bedtime for her too. It's a wide bed so they'll both fit." He glanced down at his wrist watch before he moved around the table to picked Grace up and take her indoors to get ready for the night.

"I'll take her, Jess." Sam rose from his seat and walked around the table. He carefully took Abigail off of Jessica and gave her a soft kiss on the forehead.

Grace kept playing with her toys on the blanket, singing to herself. She alternated between "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "If You're Happy And You Know It" without pause.

"I thought I'd take you on in a card game later" Sam said to Dean with a cocky look on his face.

"You ain't beatin' me today, kiddo" Dean replied with a smug half-smile and took a pull of his beer. "Nor any other day."

"You say that every time" Sam reminded him, confidently.

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Dean" Cas said warningly.

"We are too many boys" Grace said out of the blue. She grabbed the collar on Cas' shirt with her tiny hands. "I don't like boys."

The colour disappeared from Cas' face at Grace's statement. Dean almost choked on his beer, coughing and laughing at the same time.

"I like gummi bears!" she concluded.

"I think she's on to something" Jess commented with a smile.

Sam looked amused. He raised his eyebrows doubtingly at her.

"Don't give me that look, baby" she said right before Sam blew her a kiss with his only free hand, and she rolled her eyes with a smile.

"I read somewhere that eighty percent of all fatal car crashes are caused by men" Ellen added and sat back with a smirk.

"Don't encourage it" Bobby exclaimed to his wife.

She leaned over the armrest of her chair and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek.

"Be nice or you'll sleep in Dean's garage tonight" she said lovingly.

"Balls" Bobby muttered to himself.

"Yeah!" Grace agreed. She most likely had no idea what any of them had just said. "Gummi, daddy!"

"No, Gracie. No candy now. It's bedtime" Cas explained.

"No" she tried. Her resistance was futile because a second later she yawned and rested her head against his chest.

"You bringin' me some gummis then, Cas?"

"Dean, what did we say about undermining?" he reminded.

"Gummis" Grace yawned.

"If you eat too many of them you'll get gummi tummy, Gracie."

"Yeah, that's no good." Dean scowled at a memory.

"A boy at Abby's daycare made up a song this week" Cas heard Jessica say as he and Sam started walking towards the house with their daughters. "Apparently he sings it all the time, although he only have a chorus so far. I can't remember, but it's something deep and political. It's very funny."

"I tormented an accordeon once" Bobby commented.

"You can't sooolve Texas' problems" Jessica hummed with a pensive expression.

The four started a conversation which blurred together the further away Cas and his little company got. He and Sam stepped over the threshold and into the silent house. The turntable had stopped playing somewhere in the middle of their barbecue. Cas hadn't noticed until now. They took a left after the bathroom and carried on down the hall. A nice breeze came in from the slightly open window.

"Jess loves this wallpaper" Sam said lowly. He held his sleeping Abigail with one strong arm and drew his big hands lightly over Grace's yellow walls.

"You have to ask Dean where he got it" Cas responded. "I wasn't around back then." He didn't know why he said that last thing. It made his heart hurt and he immediately regretted it.

"Cas..."

"Look." He nodded at his sleeping daugther after he had gently put her down in her bed. She looked like an angel; a drooling angel who slept with her mouth hanging open, one little hand under her head and one on her tummy. She looked like Dean. Exactly like Dean, actually.

"Out like a light." Sam smiled and placed Abigail next to Grace, kissed the top of her head and pulled the cover over them both. When he straightened his back, he pulled back his brown hair behind his ears. He was a good father. Cas wondered quietly to himself if anyone ever looked at him when he wasn't watching, and thought that he was a good parent.

"I knew the bed was big enough" he said quietly.

"Are you okay, Cas?"

Silence spread out. He just stood there for a moment, watching the two girls, before he turned and walked out into the hallway. He could hear the careful steps of Sam following him. Sam pulled the door almost to a close behind them.

"Cas-"

"Why does everyone keep asking me that? It's been five years. Can't you people just leave it?" He shut up suddenly, realizing that he was hissing the words at Sam. He sounded so mean, while the tall man was merely showing concern. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry 'bout it, Cas." He sounded so caring even when Cas was being an idiot.

They had ended up in the dim living room. Cas carefully lifted the glossy black record off of the turntable with his fingertips and flipped it over with refined habit.

"I don't mean to interfere" Sam continued persistently.

Cas lowered the needle onto the edge, right outside of the gouging that was the first track. The record crackled.

"Dean's told me... Well, I mean, I practically had to hold him down and threaten to shave his eyebrows off, but..." Sam chuckled shortly.

The music started again.

"He said that you seem-... on edge."

"I'm fine."

"I know someone else how likes to use that line."

"I'll go out to the others now."

"How's it going with Jody?" Sam changed tactics. He sounded slightly lighter at heart. "Your talks, I mean. Is she giving you a hard time?" he asked jokingly. Despite that, Cas knew that Sam really wanted to know. Good thing it was part of doctor Jody Mills' job to keep her clients' secrets.

"Do you think I should go get more beer? They might have finished them off by now." With that he left Sam alone in the living room.

He took an extra turn into the kitchen to get more beer for his guests in the yard. A whole new case stood waiting for him by the counter next to the refrigerator. He returned out to the table under the tree, with Sam following close behind. Dean seemed to be in the middle of telling a story when Cas placed the beer case on the tabletop. He leaned back with one leg over the other up on Cas' chair.

"So he goes to the shrink 'cause his wife thinks he's obsessed with sex" Dean said with a cocky grin, chewing on a grass straw in the side of his mouth. "And the shrink shows him a picture of a flower and he asks the man what it reminds him off. Obviously the man says 'sex'. So the shrink shows him a picture of a duck and the man says 'sex'. Then the shrink shows him a picture of a boat and the man says 'sex' and the shrink says-" Dean cleared his throat. "'Well, it seems like you're actually obsessed with sex.' And the man goes 'Me? You're the one who's showing me all these dirty pictures!'"

Bobby, Ellen, Sam and Jessica laughed. Dean flicked his eyebrows, took a pull of his beer and looked pleased with himself.

"God, boy! You kiss your daughter with that mouth?" Ellen shook her head with a smile. "Good thing you've got charm."

"That's what they tell me!"

"At least you're not guzzling upside down from kegs anymore!"

He gave Sam a sharp look.

"You're a good kid." Bobby raised his beer and nodded towards Dean. "I've seen this boy here grow up, grin going from goofy-looking to ladykiller."

Cas shivered.

"Yeah, sure, Bubba. We all know I've always been adorable" he said with conviction. "And now you're just dying to babysit my little monster. Any time, right?" He arched his brows with a wide grin at the older man across the table.

Bobby bit his teeth together, causing everyone to laugh at the constipated look on his face.

"That reminds me" Ellen said suddenly. "Birthday presents! Bobby. Go get my bag in the car."

Still with his feet up, Dean leaned forward and grabbed the hem of Cas' shirt, pulling him backwards to him. The movement caught Cas by surprise and he ended up in Dean's lap.

"The kid. She asleep?" he asked in Cas' ear.

Cas nodded once.

"Before I even put her down in her bed."

"Good."

They sat under the tree for hours until the sky darkened and the lights hanging from the branches proved to be useful after all. Cas lost count of the number of beers consumed in total, and when Dean brought out the last case with an "Expelliarmus bitches!", Cas didn't object.

At some point during the late evening, Cas and Jessica ended up in the garage, also known as Dean's work space. The beautiful blonde tiptoed around and stroked a finger on all the handcarved furniture, eyes glowing, completely in awe.

"Dean has such a way with wood."

Cas' face grew hot, as if someone had lit a fire under his skin. Thank God it was dark in the garage and Jessica had her drunken attention somewhere else. She inspected a lathed Windsor-like chair.

"It's all his work" Cas said. "I couldn't hit a nail with a hammer if my life depended on it."

She kept inspecting the chair and Cas started to feel uncomfortable; there was a strange ringing in his ear. Probably just the alcohol.

"He's a real American dream farm boy." He kept rambling, not really knowing where he was going with it. "He knows all kinds of ways a man can do what a man's gotta do."

It was true though. He wasn't even half as good a carpenter as Dean. A little sewing and knitting, on the other hand, was something he had learned from watching his mother. When he was a child he had been left with her while his father and brothers were off elsewhere. He had even crocheted a yellow and black bumblebee blanket for Grace a few months ago.

"He loves you very much."

He met her eyes. Hers were glossy and shadowed by a veil of the slight intoxication.

"We all do."

Cas shoved his hands down in the front pockets of his trousers and shifted on his heels. He shrugged a shoulder.

"We do. You're not alone, Cas. We're all here fo-"

"Cas?"

His eyes turned towards the sound of Dean's rumbling voice just before the man barged in through the ajar wooden double doors. The dark blond hair looked damp and the sleeves on his shirt were rolled up.

"You gotta go talk some sense into your kid, Cas" he said with a desperate undertone in his deep voice.

"Oh, so she's just my kid now?" he asked sarcastically, relieved to get a break from Jessica's interventional attempts into his emotions. "What did she do?"

"She's your kid whenever she screams her lungs out about keeping the stray animal that's hiding in the freaking wardrobe." He looked positively exhausted.

Cas rolled his eyes.

"The little monster is slippery too! Can't get a good grip on the fucker."

"Don't swear, Dean."

"What is it?" Jessica asked anxiously, staring at Dean. "Are the girls alright?"

"It's a huge freakin' rat."

"A rat?"

All three of them quickly ventured over the lawn to the house, not even kicking their shoes off in the hallway. The room was quiet and the light from the lit lamp in the window was mellow. Even Grace kept her little lips pressed tightly together as she and Abigail peeked over the edge of the bed towards the wardrobe. Cas almost started to suspect Dean to be playing some trick on him, until he heard a scratching noise from behind the closed doors.

"It's the rat!" Jessica squeaked. She hurried over to the bed and held the girls, never letting her eyes leave the closet.

Cas took one long, slow step towards the doors and reached out a hand. There was another low rattle inside and he could hear Jessica wince again. His hand gripped the handle and nudged it open slightly. As the light started to cast its glow down from the lamp in the window into the dark space, Cas' heart began to race a little.

He peered his eyes and tried to focus them on the dark little ball of fur curled up in a pile of clothes. They had once been folded neatly, but the animal had scattered them and turned them into a comfortable, protective nest around itself.

"Dean..." He sighed and sank down on his knees, reaching for the animal.

"Cas! What are you doing?" Jessica asked, audibly tense and cautious.

He noticed, in the corner of his eye, how Dean took a step back when Cas leaned in further and picked up the frightened little creature. A sigh of relief came from Jessica and a delighted giggle left the two little girls when the orange cat was brought out into the light, pushing its paws against Cas' chest.

"Is this the droid you're looking for?" Cas teased and looked up at Dean who merely frowned in return.

"It's so cute!"

Cas turned his head and smiled at Jessica's support. Grace reached out her little arms towards the cat in Cas' lap, and grabbed the air with her tiny fingers, grinning widely.

"Why did you call it a m-o-n-s-t-e-r, Dean?" Jessica spelled out.

"He doesn't like cats" Cas explained bluntly.

"I'm allergic, I keep tellin' ya! Let it outside."

"Owning a cat can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes."

Dean arched a brow at Cas but remained silent. He looked like he wanted to speak against the idea.

"I'll clear off the table." Begrudgingly, he left the room and the decision of what to do with the cat.

"Cat! Cat!" Grace jumped up and down on the bed with a wide grin.

"No, Grace. Sleep. Sleep."

"I'll deal with these two" Jessica said calmly, and in that moment, Cas was incredibly grateful.

"Mommy. Can we gat a cat too?" he heard Abigail ask as he left the room.

The cat was now purring in his arms and he couldn't help but run his fingers over the smooth, orange fur as he walked towards the front porch. He knew that Dean was right; they couldn't adopt a pet right now, let alone a stray cat that could be carrying all kinds of nasty bugs and things. But when he closed the door behind them and put the little furball down by his feet, it looked so small and helpless and cuddly, staring up at him with wide, round eyes.

"Hang on a second."

Cas went inside, careful to close the door so that the cat wouldn't follow him in again. When he returned back out, he had a pale brown cardboard box with him. He put it down to the right by the foot of the bench and made it look more inviting with the help of an old blanket. The cat followed him around with every step he took.

"What do you think about that?" he asked, looking down at the little orange intruder.

It stroked itself against his calf and purred, its tail swaying softly back and forth over the jeans fabric that covered his leg.

"No, honey." He picked it up and put it down in the box. "You can sleep here or you can go back to where you came from." With that said, and an incredibly heavy heart, he backed away and went inside the house, just barely manageing to leave the cat alone out there.

The house was quiet. The light was out in Grace's room, the door to the guest room was shut, and Cas could discern someone's broad shoulder popping up on the other side of the couch's backrest. He silently made his way upstairs and pulled the blinds shut in their room before going to bed. After a moment, something seemed to be stirring in the room.

"Cas" he heard whispered in a hoarse voice from somewhere in the pitch black. "You wanna do it?"

He chuckled. It sounded so corny.

"Who even says that?" Curiously, he reach out a hand. "Where are you, Dean?"

There was a shift in the mattress. Something met his fingertips and he soon figured out that it was Dean's hands, slithering up his limbs. Gentle, worshiping, restrained. Sparks flew out of him and into Cas everywhere where their skin touched and they were glowing, radiating light from inside their bodies, like a thousand quasars. All the while Dean came closer, climbing up from the foot of the bed. He didn't have his shirt on, Cas realized with thrilling excitement, and when Dean was right in front of him it became clear that his pants had gone missing as well. Cas could just about see the form of his nakedness through the dark. There was a pulsating, electric, warm presence all around them. Maybe it was just the beers they had consumed that made Cas feel like this.

"Where have your clothes gone off to?" he asked innocently.

"Gave 'em the night off" Dean answered with a rough voice. He smirked when Cas chuckled, and leaned closer between Cas' covered legs. "Gimmie something" he whispered a millimeter from Cas' mouth, one hand on his cheek, the other grasping his thigh through the duvet. A second later he stole a touch of Cas' lips, a kiss which immediately grew in depth and heat and depth and...

Cas pushed him away involuntarily with unsteady hands against the warm skin on Dean's chest.

"No. Think with your upstairs brain for once, Dean We're not alone."

Dean straightened his back slightly and turned his head to peer his eyes towards where he knew the door was.

"Yeah, we are."

"I mean in the house, stupid. What if they hear us? They're going to think I'm the worst parent-"

"Don't get carried away, Cas. C'mon. We can do that thing we like where I touch yours and you touch mine."

"I can't, Dean. It feels weird with your family here."

Dean let go of Cas' thighs and sat back on his heels between Cas' knees.

"Our family. And they wouldn't even hear us. I can be quiet as hell!"

Cas shook his head. A second later he remembered that Dean might not have seen it in the dark.

"No."

"Fine." Dean drew a deep breath and crashed on his side of the bed.

Cas felt defeated, somehow, even though it was his call. With a sigh, he slid back down on his back. The silence felt pressing. His body, tense, on edge. He could feel every shift, every movemet of Dean's body next to his. His breathing deepened.

It was suddenly extremely hot. Too hot. The warmth of the summer night crashed over them with all it had. Cas started to twist and turn under the covers. He was sweating in places he didn't even know had sweat glands.

"Dean" he whispered, throat dry. "Open the window. Please. Dean?"

With a low grunt the silhuette of Dean stood up and walked to the window. Cas could hear him unhook and open the window slightly before he returned to bed and landed on his stomach.

A vague breeze reached Cas' face but it didn't do much good.

"It's still too hot" he kept complaining, unable to make his mind get the rest it so desperately needed. He sighed audibly once, twice. He tossed and turned on his side, kicking the cover off of himself little by little.

When Dean eventually had enough, it happened very quickly. He rolled over and pressed Cas down into the mattress with his whole body, lips parted by his ear.

"If you don't shut up about the heat, Cas- I don't care who hears us- I swear, I'll give you a reason to feel hot. Quid pro quo."

Cas didn't think. It was too easy. Too tempting. Before he could stop himself, he had repeated his complaints. A hand started to caress its way up the inside of his thigh while another hand held his wrist still on the sheet above his head. He felt his cock twitching against Dean, his mouth suddenly claimed and silenced.

Afterwards, Cas rolled over and moved closer to Dean, laying on his side. He curled his right hand in Dean's, lacing their fingers together. He thought about the first time Dean had laid his hands on him, two years ago. The touch, the feeling it had given him, how safe he had felt. Even now, as he lay in bed beside him, Cas' hand cuddled gently inside Dean's warm, calloused one, he remembered the time when they were nothing but a pair of hands on a stranger. He would never forget... Although, there must have been an identical first time before that. Another first time of Dean touching him. A first time that Cas actually had forgotten. It made him sad. He wished he knew what to do to remember. That's what everyone wanted. That's the one thing he couldn't do.

"I'm sorry" he said, voice faint, eyes on their entwined hands.

"For what?"

"I can't remember."

Dean's left hand on Cas' neck scruff pulled him in. Dean's lips on Cas' were gentle and passionate and understanding.

It was almost dawn when they finally gave in to sleep. Dean's eyes were near closing as he pressed his lips against Cas' temple, the man snoring like crazy in Dean's strong arms. Fingers still linked together, their joint hands resting on his chest.

Just as Dean was on the verge of full unconsciousness, his half-open eyes landed on his golden locket, habitually placed on the nightstand to avoid being ripped and ruined. It was barely visible in the dark room. He thought of Cas' picture, hidden inside.

Cas shifted slightly in his sleep and Dean waited until he had settled before he slowly moved to accommodate the change in position. He smiled a little as he carefully brushed Cas' unruly, dark hair away from his forehead.

"I'll treat you right, Cas" he mouthed. "I'll get it right this time."


	4. The outside-joke inside

He awoke with a mild headache; someone was faintly hammering their way out of his skull. The sheets and covers were keeping him wrapped up in a warm cocoon of safety. He refused to open his eyes and instead turned over on his side, trying to fall back asleep. A loud, sharp buzzing from a blender cut through to him from downstairs and forced him to stay conscious. He swallowed what little saliva he had left in his dry throat and smacked his tongue a few times. It tasted sour. He rested his arm across his forehead. His face felt sweaty and greasy. He tried to recall how many beers and glasses of wine had been consumed the previous night, after the kids had been put to bed, but to no avail.

"Ey! Time for breakfast, Aurora."

Dean's voice rumbled around the room, in through one of Cas's ears and out the other; like that giant rock that rolled after Indiana Jones in that movie that Dean liked. Was it the one with the crystal human craniums?

He groaned loudly and turned over on the mattress again, away from Dean's voice.

"I ain't gonna let you stall a meal for me" Dean continued. "Ellen's making pancakes."

Naomi had never made pancakes for Cas.

They were both quiet for a moment. He could feel Dean waiting for him.

"I'll give you five minutes." His footsteps made the floor and the stairs creak when he left.

Cas groaned again and reluctantly let his legs fall over the edge of the bed, not yet peeling his eyelids apart. Once he did, he was met by the sight of the soft curtains that framed the window by his bedside, making the sunlit greenery outside look like a painting. It was calming as ever.

He yanked a T-shirt and his sweatpants off of a chair and pulled them on, rubbing his face as he went downstairs. He entered the now crowded kitchen and suddenly felt torn. He silently wished that every day could start like this; with all of these people who supposedly loved him, making breakfast together. At the same time he just wanted to crawl back under the covers in bed, and die.

"I think we got a flower printed apron in some cupboard" Dean said jokingly.

Ellen poured another slob of pancake batter into the pan and shot him a dirty look. "I ain't no goddamned Betty Crocker."

Bobby scoffed on a kitchen chair. Jessica was setting the table and Sam passed by, carrying a few extra folding chairs in both his giant hands. The room was vibrating with life and warmth. Even Grace and Abigail were awake. They played under the kitchen table, not paying any attention to the commotion around them. It reminded Cas of something and he turned to the front door.

"Good morning, Cassie!" Jessica cheered, but he was already gone.

The cardboard box outside the door was empty, except for the blanket. Cas exhaled heavily. He had secretly wanted the cat to still be there. Such childish hope, he thought to himself.

Someone called his name from inside the house, and he turned on his heel again.

The pancakes were delicious and thick; "a proper, hardy meal to start my boys' day" as Ellen had put it when she shoved the fully loaded plate on to the middle of the table. Cas indulged Dean by letting Grace deal with her meal on her own, without his ever guiding and helpful hands making sure she wouldn't make a mess of herself. She gripped her plastic cup of juice with both hands, and Cas watched her in the corner of his eye. He felt Dean's eyes on him across the table and met them for a second before he stood up. He got the message. Loud and clear. He was being too much again.

"Excuse me" he murmured.

The conversation around the kitchen table died down.

"You okay, Cas?"

He nodded. "Just going to the bathroom." He pulled a grin. "I think I'm old enough to go on my own now" he joked dryly.

The others chuckled. The conversation was picked back up.

He pulled at the handle and locked the door behind him, then he gripped the sink with both hands and drew a deep breath. His heartbeat was hard and pulsated from his chest up through his throat and into his head. He tried to breathe slower and deeper, his mouth full of sour saliva. The tap was turned on, water soaked his face but it barely felt like it helped; it was as if his skin was made out of those water resistant table cloths.

Suddenly his eyes were burning, and the tears burned too as they ran down his cheeks. He cried and cried for reasons he couldn't even put a finger on himself. When his chest hurt too much and his nose was too full of snot to breath through, he stopped. He stared at himself in the mirror and held himself up as best as he could. It wasn't easy recognising the blotchy, swollen mess that was looking back at him. The running water masked the sound as he blew his puffy nose into some toilet paper. He used one of the small rags from under the sink to dab cold water onto his eyes while he tried to regain control over his breathing. A few minutes later he carefully dried his face on a towel, looked himself over once, and unlocked the bathroom door.

The rest of the day was actually nice. Despite Cas being in a bit of a bubble, isolating himself in his own head, they all had breakfast together with conversations full of inside jokes that Cas didn't understand, piles of pancakes that hurt his stomach and spilled orange juice. It continued in the same relaxed manner as they decided to sit outside under the big tree, at last night's party table, soaking up the sun's rays. Cas just went along with whatever. Sam tried to take Dean on in some form of football game with just two players and a lot of dribbling. The children drew pictures, and Bobby took a nap on the couch in the living room. Jessica and Ellen tried to hold a conversation with Cas at the table; he felt sorry for them, for trying. A few grass straws tickled his bare shin and he had to scratch it. He didn't feel quite there.

Later, as they said goodbye in the doorway, Ellen held a coat-clad, sleeping Grace in her arms, and Bobby gave Dean an awkward but firm handshake. Sam and his family had left earlier in the afternoon. The sunlight was fading to a soft orange shade outside. Sounds of seagulls screeching in the distance made their lakeside house feel like an oceanside villa.

"I hope you'll have a nice couple of days now" Ellen said with a smile. "Happy birthday again, Cas."

"Yeah, thanks for havin' us, boys" Bobby said.

"Do you have everything?" Cas felt anxious about the idea of having Grace stay over at Ellen and Bobby's house. It wasn't that he didn't trust them; not having his daughter at home was what worried him the most.

"Relax." She smiled reassuringly and gave a pointed nod to Grace's bag over her shoulder. "This ain't my first kiddie rodeo."

Dean kissed Ellen on the cheek and Grace on the forehead. Cas quickly did the same before they left. The door was pushed shut behind them, closing with a click.

"They'll be fine" Dean reassured. He knew Cas so well.

Cas sighed. "What are you up to now?" He couldn't help but scrunch up his eyebrows in concern; he didn't like not knowing what was going on.

"Don't worry" Dean cooed. "I have a plan."

"Is it a good one?"

Dean hesitated. "I have a plan" he repeated, before disappearing into the living room.

A few seconds passed in silence, then  _Stone In Love_  started to boom through out the whole house. The bass nearly shook the glass in the window frames. During the first guitar riffs, Dean came sliding back into Cas's view, playing air guitar to the song. He was wearing only socks and boxers. The rest of his clothes seemed to have been discarded somewhere in haste. He reached out his hands and danced closer to Cas with confidence in the way he swayed his hips. Cas rolled his eyes but couldn't stop himself from smiling. He let himself get swept away when Dean took his hands and pulled him along across the floor.

His skin felt like it was made out of golden light the way that Dean touched him on their bed in the boiling warm bedroom. The sun had heated it up all day and it was unforgiving. They had opened the windows which helped slightly now that the sun had set. Dean was just as persistent. They made love again and again until the sun began to creep up through the tree foliage. That morning Cas found it hard to get out of bed for a different reason than usual. Just before seven o'clock he forced himself up, practically rolling off the mattress. Dean snoozed on. The stair creaked under him as he went down to put on a pot of coffee. He hadn't ironed his suit for today's session. He had forgotten to buy more muesli bars. He peaked into Grace's empty room out of pure habit before he left. The car ride felt longer than usual.

"I feel like there's something you're not telling me" doctor Jody Mills said pensively. "Or something you're not telling yourself. You need to let it out and let go before you can move on and heal. Part of recovery is about addressing painful tings. If you ignore them, they only hurt you more. They become triggers."

"Let go of what? There's nothing to let go of. I don't remember anything more" Cas insisted nonchalantly. "I'm a clean slate."

"Are you sure?" She didn't look like she believed him.

Cas didn't answer. His pulse quickened like it would for an impending physical attack.

Jody drew a deep breath and looked down into her notebook for a few seconds. "Have you asked Dean about your scars yet?"

He winced imperceptibly when she said Dean's name. He never got used to the fact that some people outside of the family knew. But Jody was apparently an old friend of Bobby's, a fact that also contributed to Cas' cheap, continued sessions with her. To be honest he wouldn't exactly mind quitting the sessions. Seeing nothing but the deep green forests, the glistening lake and the wide, warm fields every day for the rest of his life could possibly serve as its own rehabilitation. No people, no questions.

"I don't want to talk about Dean" he eventually said, dodging her tries to coax something out of him. He felt bad for not trying too. Either way, his answer would have been no.

"Why not?" She sounded so pedagogic. Calm and caring and interested. It itched and irritated Cas' whole body and he nervously moved a little in his seat. He could feel his face flame up.

"I just don't want to."

"Are you afraid you won't like what you might say?" she asked.

"No-..."

A pause.

"In a lifetime, the brain's long-term memory can hold as many as one quadrillion separate bits of information... That's a hell of a lot for anyone to handle- Excuse my language."

Cas smiled a little at her 'unprofessional' way of talking.

"A healthy, undamaged brain, most of the time, remembers things the way it wants to, which isn't always correct either. Don't beat yourself up." Jody shifted in her seat. When she looked up at him again she seemed softer, more personal somehow. "I heard about your time at Sunnyville College of Medicine."

"I heard about that too" he said, complying by contributing ever so slightly to the conversation. "They said I never got the chance to graduate."

She didn't have to ask why. It hanged in the air between them for a second, unspoken.

"What did you study?" she asked. "I don't know that much about med school. Was it medicine or surgery or-...?"

"They said I was going to be a D.O." Her blank face indicated that it didn't ring a bell, and Cas understood. He had had the same confused expression on when he had heard the two letters for the first time. A doctor of psychology was probably pretty far off from the kind of doctor he had been striving to become. "Doctor of osteopathic medicine. I would basically have been licensed to practice everything that is medicine and surgery. Apparently."

"You must have had a knack for it. Sounds important."

He shrugged his shoulders.

Silence. Eventually Jody scrunched up her nose with a smile.

"I'll never understand how a college could do so well in a small town like this."

"Funding." The skin under Cas' fingernails itched. He scratched it absentmindedly with his thumbnail. "My-... father is a big fan of having friends in high places. So he scatters a few millions among different companies and organisations from time to time."

"It seems to be working" she commented.

Cas snorted grimly to himself. "Yes. He has done alright for himself."

"Do you talk often?"

"No, we-"

He looked up at Jody. She was watching him closely, leaning back in her armchair; all to not seem too obviously interested. He wondered whether she had been staring at him for long. He realised she was trying to trick him by using smalltalk to make him open up. It made him furrow his brows in annoyance. She was good.

"We don't."

"If I suggested you took contact with them again... would you?" She peered her eyes pensively, as if she was considering all possible outcomes of her carefully chosen words, and changing tactics. "You know, only about five percent of people in an angry mob actually care about the issue at hand. The rest are just filling a need for social belonging."

He didn't know what to do with that information.

"We need to understand people's actions" she continued. "The actual reason for their behaviour... It helps, in order to move past our own obstacles. If you talked to them maybe that would help you move forward..." Another drawn out silence. "You mentioned that your father likes having friends in high places. Did he encourage you to go into medicine too?"

Cas glanced up at the clock on the wall. Their time was up.

"I don't want to bother you any longer than what we pay for, doctor Mills." He stood up and straightened his suit jacket with both hands.

"You're not bothering me." She smiled. "This is my job, but I don't mind just talking either. If it helps." She stood up as well, calmly, and followed him to the door

He pulled on his coat and reached for the door handle. He couldn't wait to get back to the house, crawl into bed next to Dean and continue this birthday week.

Jody stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.

"You can always call me, Castiel." She sounded all grave and serious but she smiled softly still. He nodded quickly, his mouth pressed into a sharp line, and then he left.

He had to drive through the whole town to get back out onto the main road that went in an almost completely straight line back to the house. If he followed it past their driveway, he would end up at the harbour, and beyond that was road for miles until the next clump of houses.

As if the cosmos wanted to play a joke on him, he was forced to stop in a cue when the bridge went up to let a small sail boat drift on by on the river. He sighed to himself, letting his stare wander out the windows. Nothing ever changed in this place. The old women still sat outside of the beauty parlour in matching, tacky, pink outfits, throwing looks after every person passing them by. He hoped they wouldn't notice him. He tried to sink down further into the drivers seat. Their hawk eyes managed to spot him anyway. He tried not to let it bother him when they leaned closer to each other, still watching him.

Kids played on the playground by the river side, while their mothers chatted away on the park benches nearby. One of the little boys pulled a girl's braid and made her cry.

On the parking lot next to the apartment buildings were a couple of young guys in their little four wheel trucks, standing still, engines running, and polluting the air for everyone in more ways than just through the exhaust pipe on their old cars. The back window of one of the vehicles had a slight vision hindrance and eyesore in the form of the confederate flag. One of the boys had dreadlocks and smoked a cigarette that looked too crooked to not be hand-rolled, in slight contrast to the flag; it didn't add up culture-wise. The guys' pimple faces made googly eyes at two girls in summer dresses walking by. They honked their car horns and called after them through their rolled down windows. They were the sort of idiots who used to speed up in their shitty cars just to try and hit birds on the road. Cas knew their kind.

A shabby-looking man sat on a small chair outside one of the liquor stores, barely even looking up at the people hurrying past him. A man with sideburns slowed down on his steps, made a face and kicked the mans old soup can in front of him with his muddy North Face boots, as he lifted and repositioned his trucker cap with a stitched bald eagle on it over the words "Don't rustle my feathers!" in red, white and blue. A couple of copper pennies rolled out on the street. The trucker cap man started to kick up a storm, towering over the huddled beggar. Cas couldn't hear what he was yelling, but he could imagine.

The metal letters on the reader board outside the church comprised the ludicrous sentence "Remember, Satan was the first to demand equal rights". His chest hurt suddenly. For the rest of the drive home he pondered over if his father might have had something to do with what to put up on that bulletin board, possibly after spitting out his coffee while watching the previous week's news. It felt very possible.

Up on a tree top sat a flock of birds in a dark cluster of feathers and squawks. The lake glistened and the jetty looked inviting where it bobbed calmly as the water clucked in the space under its wooden boards. The sun was shining brightly but it was a tad colder than the day before. He slammed the car door shut and hurried on his steps on the gravel way up to the house. The door stood open.

"Dean?" he called out as he stepped onto the porch.

Dean appeared from the living room with his dark blue coffee mug and a crooked smile. Before he got a chance to speak and possibly ask about the session, Cas crashed into him and kissed him so suddenly that Dean had to take a step back so that he wouldn't fall flat on his back. Cas pushed him against the yellow wooden paneling, kissing him as if he was about to die. He unzipped Dean's jeans and without warning he sank down on his knees. The look on Dean's face and the noise he made when Cas greedily mouthed the bulge through the fabric of his underwear, as if all the air had just been punched out of his lungs, encouraged him to keep going. He pulled down the boxers and took Dean in his mouth without any hesitation.

"Cas" Dean suddenly said in a breath, stopping him with a hand in his hair.

He leaned away slightly, only holding the tip of Dean in his mouth, and looked up at his man from where he sat on his knees, his own blue eyes widened, his mouth already red and wet. Dean chipped for breath. He tightened his grip on Cas' dark hair when they locked eyes. Something hot and dark lurked in Cas' gut, something so sudden and deep that it made him want to leave Dean moaning and clawing for something to desperately cling to.

"It's cold out here" he managed to say. Then he smiled widely, with a blush across his cheeks and his freckled nose.

Cas leaned forward again and pressed his lips together as he took in all of Dean again. Slowly, dragging it out, deeply, licking up the string under Dean's hard length, then sucking it all back into his mouth. His hands traveled up Dean's thighs, digging his thumbs softly into the skin. He had him right where he wanted him, trapped between Cas' iron grip of overpowering pleasure and the yellow wall. All Dean could do was tug at his hair and whine when he once more pulled back to tongue the head. He looked up again and took in the sight of Dean. It was he, Cas, who made Dean lose his mind. It was he who gave Dean such strong sensations that he couldn't control himself. All he saw now was the shapes of them as his eyes blackened.

"Cas" he gasped hoarsely again. "Let's go inside."

"No one can see us here. There isn't another house for miles-"

"Please" he said between gritted teeth.

He pulled back and stroked Dean's erection, watching as Dean let his head drop back against the door. The first pulse of his cum landed on Cas' scruffy cheek, the corner of his mouth, the curve of his lips. Dean shuddered all over. He finally looked down with a glazed look in his eyes. His hand touched the mess on Cas' cheek, his thumb smearing it out on his mouth, moaning when Cas turned his head to kiss the palm of his hand.

"Fuck" Dean groaned under his breath, legs still shaking.

Suddenly, he pulled Cas up to his feet, kissing his slightly swollen, hot lips. His hand around Cas' wrist beckoned him to follow as Dean tucked his stuff back into his boxers and took slow steps indoors, towards the staircase. Cas felt more and more aroused for every step they took upstairs. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, short of breath and warm and lightheaded. Even the way Dean pushed their bedroom door open without taking his eyes off of Cas, was sensual. The way he hooked his fingers inside Cas' trousers, demandingly nudging him closer as he backed towards the bed until the framework stopped him. Cas followed. Always. He wanted to step closer and press their bodies together, but Dean's green stare kept him still.

"Take me." It was barely more than a rough whisper. Dean looked as if he hadn't expected himself to say those two words. He cleared his throat.

Cas swallowed. Sweat started to gather into a thin film on his skin. He wasn't sure he had heard correctly.

"What?" His voice felt unused and sounded unsure.

Afterwards Dean wouldn't let Cas catch his breath for ten seconds before he offered to fix them a bath. Jessica had given them a big woven basket full of stuff which Dean had taken it upon himself to distribute to Cas in little fun moments through out this mysterious birthday week that he had planned. He ran ahead downstairs and gave Cas a minute to collect himself. Before he followed Dean, he opened the window, straightened the bed sheets and pulled on his sweatpants. When he went to put his hands in his pockets he felt something he had forgotten about. The two young men in the photograph felt like an uncomfortable dream, at least the one that wasn't Dean. Quickly he threw it in the drawer on his bed side table and shoved it shut before the smug look on the fisherman's face got to him again.

When he finally joined Dean down in the bathroom, he was in the midst of pouring a whole glass jar of bath salts into the tub which was slowly filling up with steaming hot, clear water. Cas had to yank it from him before the foam went over the edge and onto the floor.

"You don't need all of it!" he said.

"So-rry." Dean took the jar back and put the lid on. "Lemon eucalyptus coconut oil" he read off of the label. "Hope Jess knows her bubbles. To infinity and Bed, Bath And Beyond."

Cas leaned forward and took a sniff of the fumes rising from the bath.

"I would've gone with a richer scent" Dean said out of nowhere. "Maybe pomegranate or winter apple."

He stood up and stared at Dean who started laughing.

"What? So what if I like smelling nice. Gotta do somethin' to keep you coming back for more."

The water nearly reached the top and Dean leaned over it, steadying himself with a hand on the white porcelain, and turned the taps. It wasn't until now that it registered with Cas that Dean was completely naked. His little belly roll showed when he bent his back. It made Cas all warm inside. So far this wasn't a bad birthday celebration.

Dean climbed in the tub in a weirdly careful way. He sank down with an arm up on each side and patted the water in front of him, making a face at the heat.

"Get in."

Cas nodded and swallowed a lump in his throat. This was silly, being nervous now, after what the dust bunnies in their room had just witnessed. He slipped out of his sweatpants and into the hot water, leaning his back against Dean's chest.

"So how's your day?" Dean asked lightheartedly.

"You mean 'How was the interrogation?'" Cas muttered.

"You're not a prisoner." He took some of the bubbly bath foam in one hand in front of them, tilted his hand and let it drip back down.

"I know. Sorry" he mumbled. They were all doing this for him.

He didn't know if Dean had heard him.

"So what'd Red Riding Hood say?"

"Just the usual..." He slid down slightly.

Dean waited for him to say more; he could feel it.

"She thought I should talk to my parents."

He wasn't sure what reaction he had expected to get from Dean, but all Dean did was shrug his shoulders.

"Yeah, well- She's the expert, I guess. And they're humans, right?"

"I'm not entirely sure actually" he murmured. He felt spiteful just thinking about them.

"We all know I'm a real charmer. Maybe I can appeal to their better nature."

"Humans put a man on the moon before they put wheels on luggage. I wouldn't trust their 'better nature'." He took a breath. "You don't know how it works in my family."

"Yeah, actually. I do know."

Cas shut himself up.

"So what- You don't want them knowing you're still with me?" He started to sound harsh and a little frustrated. His body hardened around Cas'.

"Dean-" he said, softer.

"You can butt heads with me 'til the cows come home, but I still think you should try workin'  _with_  Jodie and not against her."

He crossed his arms. Dean nudged at him and he leaned back into him, just a bit unwillingly.

"What if they found out that we have a daughter and that she's not even baptised?" he suddenly said.

Dean was quiet for a moment.

"What does Grace have to do with you talking to your parents?"

"Everything? She's got everything to do with it. They're her grandparents."

"They don't need to meet her. This isn't the freakin' Jerry Springer show."

Cas bent his legs, turned to face Dean and sat on his heels. The warm, bubbly water swooshed around them.

"What if they'd take her away?" A cold chill shot through his body as if someone had just poured a bucket full of ice over him.

"Social services wouldn't just jump on the Jesus train and take the homophobe cake." Dean waved Cas' anxiety away and pulled him in again and held him. He looked determined. "No one's taking anyone away."

He wanted to believe that Dean was right.

The lightbulb over the bathroom mirror hummed and filled the silence. They sat there until the water started getting lukewarm. Dean held Cas and kissed the top of his head and talked about what he would cook them for dinner and how clever he found himself who had thought of so many fun things for the coming week. Cas tried to shake the dismal feeling that had come over him. When he eventually stood up and stepped out of the tub he got a glimpse of his scars in the foggy bathroom mirror. He felt a sting of something dark, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Quickly he wrapped himself in one of their big towels before handing one to Dean and rushing out the door. The air was cold on his skin as he ran up the stairs to the bedroom.


	5. Like real hunters do

The idea that a bath and a cup of tea could fix anything had never agreed much with Cas; baths made him restless and tea made him tired. His bed, on the other hand, always calmed him down and made him feel safe. He was laying down, wrapped up in the towel like a wet burrito, looking out through the window at a vertical horizon. A memory of something similar popped up in his head; although, at that time he had been eight years old and scared of something different.

With an intruding, loud creak, the door alerted him that Dean was peaking in. He pulled the towel tighter around himself.

"You hibernating, Cas?"

"Estivating" Cas corrected him.

"What?"

"It's summer. 'Hibernating' is for winter times."

No answer. Dean moved closer behind him and lied down on the bed. He put his arm over Cas and pulled him in close. Cas suddenly remembered that Dean probably wasn't wearing anything either.

"Are you coming to me in your birthday suit, mister Winchester?" he said, trying to sound playful.

"I wouldn't pass up on an opportunity" Dean answered with a small laugh in his voice. Cas pictured his half smile.

The open window let in a wind that rustled in the foliage of the trees outside before it made the curtains quiver and Cas shiver from the cold in his now damp towel.

Dean nudged at him. "Did I do something wrong?" Cas knew he was referring to his swift exit from the steaming bathroom moments earlier.

"In the paper the other day..." he began. He felt a small shakiness in his throat and he swallowed his words to try again. "A man living a few miles over, close to Angel Bay, he... he was beaten by three other men. Pistol whipped." He forced himself to say the words he so clearly remembered having involuntarily read in the morning paper a few days earlier. "They tied him behind their truck, by his ankles, and- and dragged him across a field, and then they tied him to a fence and-..." The arm around him tightened.

"Don't think about it, Cas" Dean said. His voice sounded harsh.

"They raped him. With a glass bottle. And then they set him on fire."

"Cas-"

"He was gay, Dean. He was gay and they killed him for it." His voice cracked and he shut his mouth.

They were silent for a while. Cas tried not to let his whole body shake, but it was hard commanding himself to be still. He could hear the ticking from the clock downstairs in the kitchen.

"I won't let anyone get to you. Or Grace. You hear me?" He hardened his grip around Cas even more, if that was even possible.

Cas snorted and set one of his hands free from the towel to wipe at his face.

"It's cold in here."

"I know exactly what I'd do to sons o' bitches like that."

"Dean-"

"Let's get some dinner, ey." Dean's grip around Cas loosened, but he caught Dean's arm and placed it back around his body.

"Soon."

Carefully, he tried to turn himself on his back in Dean's embrace. He had been right; Dean was naked, and it made his heart start to race. Dean's teeth were gritted and his eyes were black; he couldn't put his finger on whether it was terrifying or turning him on. He laid his free hand on Dean's warm cheek and slowly let it slide up his unshaved face, up into his hair. The towel fell apart by his sides and their skin touched everywhere.

"Again?" Dean said with eager in his expression.

Cas pulled his face closer.

"I want to think of something else."

Dean made lasagna for dinner that evening, and talked vaguely yet excitedly about what he had planned for Cas and how their family had helped him get everything together. Cas smiled at Dean from the other side of the dimly lit kitchen table, and reminded himself how lucky he was.

The following morning he was awakened brusquely by Dean jumping on all fours right next to him on the bed. He peeled his eyes open and frowned at Dean who was dressed in moss green and grey trousers and a green woollen sweater with the zipper open half way down his chest. His face resembled that of a child on Christmas morning, with glistening eyes and a wide smile.

"Get up, get up, get up!" he insisted as he jumped up and down on the mattress.

"What time is it?" Cas murmured and reached for his phone on the nightstand. He pressed the menu button and seven minutes past five lit up in the dark room. He groaned.

"C'mon, Cas!" Dean jumped out of bed and separated the curtains.

"It's too early" Cas complained.

"Today we're getting up super early and heading to the shooting range" Dean said with eagerness. "Like real hunters do."

"What?" he moaned.

"I've already packed sandwiches. Get some trousers on. We should already be in the car. Bobby wouldn't have stood for this." Dean gleamed.

Unwillingly Cas slid out of bed onto his knees on the floor.

"I thought you said I'd like these ideas of yours." He tried giving Dean a dark stare, but Dean didn't seem to take him seriously; he just laughed and held out a hand which Cas accepted, reluctantly. He let himself be pulled up on his feet, finding his balance just as Dean threw him one of his own sweaters.

"Don't be such a freakin' baby" Dean laughed. "I'll wait in the car!" He headed down the stairs and Cas was left alone, sluggish and confused.

He pulled on his jeans and the dark reddish brown, knitted sweater and burrowed his nose into the fabric, inhaling Dean's scent deep into his lungs. He kept smelling it as he walked down the stairs, slipped into a pair of Dean's boots, walked out the door and closed it; he stopped only when he turned around and saw Dean watching him from the driver's seat of the Impala. With quickened steps he took a detour down to the mailbox. The newspaper, some news sheets from various stores in town, an unmarked envelope. On his way back to Dean's car, he coaxed the envelope open and pulled out a white paper with glued on letters cut from papers. He stopped.

"Leviticus 18:22. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" the combined paper letters read.

Cas' heart dropped. He read the note again.

"C'mon, slowpoke" Dean yelled out the window.

He forced his legs to start moving again.

When he sat down in the passenger's seat, he dropped everything on the floor, besides the note.

"What's that?" Dean asked lightheartedly as he began backing out from the driveway. He wasn't paying attention to Cas.

"Someone put this in our mailbox."

Once they were out on the road, driving in the opposite direction from Sunnyville, Dean shifted his eyes back and forth between the roadway and the note in Cas' hand. Eventually he frowned.

"There's no stamp on it" Cas continued. "They know where we live."

"There is no 'they', Cas, calm down."

"What should we do?"

"We'll carry on. It's nothin' to worry 'bout, just some kids messin' around."

He could hear the engine speed up. They were quiet for a moment. He swallowed and drew a deep breath.

"To be honest, Leviticus also says not to wear clothes made with mixed materials" Cas added lowly.

More silence.

"Nice car" he finally commented. He drew his fingers along the bottom of the window on his side.

Dean's shoulders sank slightly and he smiled sorrowfully; he probably didn't think Cas noticed, but he picked up on it in the corner of his eye.

"I've sat in it before, haven't I?"

He took his time but soon Dean nodded.

"We took a day trip once" he said. "You bought a record."

Cas nodded to himself.

"Which one?"

Dean shrugged a shoulder.

"That retro one, the green one with the english flag on it."

"The one with the Union Jack chair?" Cas corrected.

"Yeah."

"You never told me."

"I know you don't like it when I talk about crap you don't remember. I don't want you to get all moody."

Cas sank down in his seat and looked out the window. They swooshed by field after field, with the sporadic house popping up every now and then. With sudden regret he felt like he was being ungrateful.

"How fast can this thing go then?" He didn't want Dean to show him; it didn't feel safe, but he wanted so badly to humor him.

Dean smiled mischievously.

"I'm no chicken shit, you know, but I won't push her this time. You'd crap you pantaloons" he answered.

"Pantaloons are first and foremost women's trousers" Cas pointed out.

He got a snort and an amused smile in response. "Whatever."

A sense of relief came over Cas when they slowed down and turned in on a side road made out of dirt and gravel. Dean seemed to drive more carefully over the little bumps and roots, and he grimaced whenever a pebble or two shot up under the car and made a rattling and echoing metallic noise. The light blue morning sky disappeared, occasionally appearing between the tall, dark oaks and firs. Cas covered his mouth with his hand as he yawned. Dean's expression softened.

"Coffee?"

"Yes, please."

"There's a thermos in the bag." Dean threw with his head towards the backseat. "Just wait a minute. We're almost there. I don't want to scrub the seats for the rest of the day."

Cas looked over his shoulder. Dean's duffle bag sat lonely in the backseat.

Soon they came to a halt in a grassy glade surrounded by the towering forest. The road continued infront of the car through the greenery and disappeared around a bend.

"Let's start with a cuppa and some damn delicious sandwiches, by yours truly" Dean said as he clicked the old car door handle and stepped out into the rising sun.

Cas followed suit and grabbed the bag out of the backseat. Bird song echoed somewhere far away among the trees. There was a small, red wooden shed, barely a few square feet in size, shoved to the side of the grass plain. At the other end of the open space hanged what looked like a cable wire, strapped across from one tree to another. A target was hanging freely on the middle of the line.

"I didn't know this place existed" he said and marvelled at everything the rising sun touched.

"Bobby used to take me here when I was a kid" Dean said blithely. He opened the trunk of the car and lifted out a sack of cut logs. Wood clacked against wood as he put them down on the ground by the back tyre. "When Sam was big enough, he brought him too. There's an automatic clay pigeon thrower in the shed. Bobby built the machine himself."

"Imagine if you'd known that you'd be living in Winds Hollow" Cas pondered. "This place is so close to the house."

"I payed more attention to Bobby's firearm lessons when we went out here." Dean chuckled.

"Ofcourse." He poured them a steaming cup of coffee each and handed one over to Dean.

"He let me borrow the Colt for today." A secret hatch in the trunk was popped open and suddenly Dean was holding a long-barrelled gun that looked like it would fit better in a museum than at a modern-day shooting range.

"A gun?" Cas exclaimed. "I would've imagined you'd choose some kind of hunting rifle."

"It's a modified Colt Paterson ball and cap revolver from the eighteen-thirties. Dad spent years lookin' for one, so I guess you could say it's sort of a... What'd you call it, a family heirloom?"

"Patrimony?" Cas proposed with a nod.

Dean pointed a thumb at himself and smiled. "I'mma teach you to shoot before we head back home today."

"Dean, I don't know if I-"

"You'll do great. You've got me as your instructor!"

They shoved a couple of sandwiches into their mouths and nearly downed their coffee. Dean prodded him on, insisting they hurry, too excited to keep away from the day's activity for too long.

On the other side of the rode was a rised up shooting stand made out of wood that looked quite newly built; the wood was light in color and the cut edges were still rough and ridged. Dean led him over to it and instructed for him to step up on the stand. They both stuffed their ears with some yellow earplugs from Dean's pocket.

"Step forward and place your arms up on that shelf there." His voice was muffled through Cas' earplugs. He directed Cas' hands and kept holding them in his as he placed the revolver in his grip. "Now, I've already loaded it. It's got a folding trigger, so you gotta cock the hammer for the trigger to become visible. I'll show you."

Cas was about to remove his hands to let Dean do it, but Dean held him still. With Dean's arms around him and a firm grip on the exposed trigger, Dean helped him aim, and they pulled the trigger together, unleashing a loud cracking noise and a thin cloud of smoke from the barrel. The bullet missed the target but hit a nearby tree trunk.

"Not bad" Dean said right by Cas' ear. He felt warm. The excitement had made his heart start to race. "That was close."

Dean helped him shoot two more times before Cas decided he wanted to try it on his own, mostly to impress him. He fired two shots, one of which hit the outer ring of the circle target, and the thrill it gave him surprised him every time. When the rain started to pour down over the glade, they decided to head home. Quickly they ran back to the Impala. Cas jumped in the passenger's seat and closed the door before the slight wind could blow the cold rain into the car.

"That's freakin' freezing!" Dean slammed the door shut beside him and started the car. With a few quick manoeuvres he turned the car around on the grass and started driving back home. He turned the radio on. A guitar played a little melody that Cas found himself enjoying.

"Dean?"

Dean hummed in response without taking his eyes off of the uneven road.

"Why did your dad spend so long looking for a Colt revolver?" He felt nervous asking but he didn't budge. "To be fair, why does anyone buy firearms? It's not like we're still a frontier nation where it is necessary for common people to protect themselves from the dangers of nature."

"I guess. And I don't know." Dean shrugged a shoulder. "Dad went a bit crazy after mom died. He convinced himself she had been murdered. As if someone had crawled into Sammy's room and cut the electrical wiring in the ceiling above his crib. "

Cas swallowed, quietly thinking about the answer for a moment. He felt compelled to show some respect. Sam could have died when he was a baby. Cas hadn't known.

"But why the Colt, specifically?" he continued.

"Maybe 'cause of the legend."

"There's a legend?" Cas repeated sarcastically.

Dean laughed.

"I knew you'd be sceptic."

"Well, go on. Spit it out. Tell me this legend."

"It's said that with the original thirteen bullets you can kill anything."

"Any gun can kill anything, that's kind of the point of guns" Cas said in disbelief. Dean kept laughing.

"I know, I know, but that's the legend. Maybe he expected the zombie apocalypse or something" he joked.

He turned in on the driveway and continued up as close to the house as possible before turning the key in the ignition, letting the engine die down. The rain drops splattered against the windshield and the carcass around them.

"It's a terrible legend" Cas established.

"I've heard better ones, yeah."

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the rain crashing around them. It was kind of nice, being sheltered, time seemed to have frozen in the space inside the car.

"Should we just run for it?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Twenty seconds later they were standing under the roof on the porch, panting and rubbing at their arms to keep warm. The rain was like a wall, rushing down over everything. They laughed. Cas wrenched some rain water from the fabric of his sweater.

"Come here" Dean ordered.

Cas stepped closer.

"Up."

He lifted his arms above his head and let Dean pull the soaked sweater off of him, leaving him topless and bare chested.

"I'm still cold" Cas complained.

Ruffling his hair in the process, Dean managed to get his own sweater off as well, fighting against it as it clung to his torso.

"I'll warm you up." He was about to drop the wet mess of clothes on the floor, but Cas caught it and hung it up over the railing which encircled the porch. It probably wouldn't get dry in this weather, but one could always hope.

"Don't be such a slob."

Dean stepped closer now and kissed Cas with one hand on his neck and one on his back. He nibbled at his lower lip and sucked it into his mouth slightly. A warmth burst into existence in Cas' chest and he threw his arms around Dean.

"I was planning on impaling a few sausages on some sticks back there, make a fire with my own bare hands, get the real outdoorsy experience. Bet that would have really impressed ya" Dean said lowly. "But I guess we're just gonna have to think of something else."

"What do you have in mind?" Cas couldn't help but smile.

"Camp fire on the porch?" Dean said excitedly after pretending to think about it for a second.

"No." He tried backing off, but Dean quickly wrapped his arms around him and held him still, laughing. "I'm not letting you burn down the house."

"I'm not gonna burn down the house, what do you think I am, an amateur?" He snorted as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

They ended up compromising; Cas went upstairs and collected new sweaters, all the big pillows and blankets he could find, and brought them out onto the porch, and he let Dean make a sort of camp fire in the empty grill. The rain still poured down when they cozied up together wrapped up in the blankets with big coffee cups and blackened sausages on forks. They sky was grey and didn't at all look like midday. Dean suddenly frowned.

"What?"

"This is missing something..." he said and scratched his chin, with a pointed stare at the coffee.

Cas raised an eyebrow and smiled.

"Baileys?"

Dean nodded as his grin grew wider. Before long he stood up and ran into the house. Cas imagined him rummaging through the liquor cabinet in the living room.

"Got it!" He plopped back down on the pillows next to Cas and huddled close in under the blankets again. "Aint I just such a great provider, babe" he said and poured the creamy alcohol in their coffees. "Cheers to... to you, Cas! Happy freakin' birthday!"

"Cheers to getting old."

They clinked their cups together and took a sip; Dean took a gulp.

For the rest of the day they'd watch the rain on the porch, wrapped up and warm. Dean played games on his smartphone and Cas started reading the first couple of chapters of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", for the second time. They were practically laid down in each other's laps when they realised that it was getting late, and they decided to go indoors. The fire had died down on it's own in the grill; Cas put the lid on it, just to be sure. And after a cozy evening on the couch, pressed close, eating off of a tray with nachos like it was the last greasy meal on the planet, they went up to bed.

The night was dark and still, and the rain had stopped a while ago. Moonlight created a silver frame on the wall where it creeped in around the closed up curtains. Crickets played their spindly violin legs outside in the garden and the fields.

"What would happen to her, to Grace, if we were gone?" Cas spoke into the darkness and the silence. His head was a mess of yarn that needed its own time to untangle itself.

Dean exhaled audibly somewhere next to him; Cas could discerned see the contours of him.

"I don't know. Bobby and Ellen would probably take her, or Sammy maybe." He rubbed at his eyes, yawned and turned on his side, closer. "I'm legally her only parent. So your family wouldn't get their hands on her. Don't worry, okay?" He stared right at Cas and Cas felt like he should nod but he didn't know if Dean would be able to see it.

"Okay."

Strong arms pulled him into a warm cocoon like embrace, his cheek against Dean's chest.

"Sleep."

He couldn't tell what time it was when he woke up; the light was dusky grey and calm. He tried rubbing the gravel out of his eyes as he sat up, resting on his elbows. Dean was still asleep next to him, snoring with his mouth agape; it wasn't time to wake up yet, but his throat felt sandpaper dry. He reached for the glass on his nightstand and groaned when he found it empty. Continuously trying to swallow and wet his throat, he forced himself out of bed and down the stairs in the dark, towards the refreshing stream of cold water in the kitchen just waiting for him in the faucet. Looking out over the pale early morning garden outside the kitchen window, he filled up his glass and gulped it all down in one go. He filled it again, to the brim, and journeyed back up to bed. He threw a quick glance down the hallway at Grace's dark, empty bed room.

A full glass of liquid and a dark house wasn't a great combination; on the last step he stubbed his foot, spilled some of the water on the recently polished wooden floors and managed to slip yet again, his heart racing as he fell and hit his head on the door handle. "Just my luck" he thought to himself as he tried to sit up, biting his lip to not scream in pain and thereby wake Dean up; not that Dean would be woken up by anything less of an avalanche. With a hand on his forehead and his chest full of self-pity, he went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. He looked at Dean and nearly considered waking him up just to have him comfort him, but he decided that Dean would probably laugh at him or even more probably just turn over on his other side and continue snoring. Cas took a few more gulps of water before he went back to sleep.

Angry, loud voices, commotion and the cracking noise of something shattering woke him up again. He sat up and pulled up his cover to hide himself under, only peeking out from under it out of curiosity. Suddenly the door to his room flew open and his father stumbled in; the tall man gave himself a few seconds to orientate himself before his eyes landed on Cas and made a cold shiver run down his little spine. For a second it was quiet and still, until his father rushed at him where he was lain in his bed; his eyes were widened, his nostrils flared, teeth bared. Struck by fear Cas threw the bedcover over himself and closed his eyes as hard as he could, hoping it would be enough protection, but it never was. With a harsh grip his father pulled the cover off of him and grabbed his arm in a threatening grip that hurt, yanking him around on the bed. Cas cringed in pain, and tears started slipping down his cheeks.

"I'll teach you a lesson, Castiel" his voice rumbled like thunder in the sky. "You'll never again dare to-"

"Stop!"

Cas peered his eyes towards the door and the sound of the command. Gabriel was stood in the doorway, his face twisted into the angriest expression Cas had ever seen on him; he had also never seen him this brave before.

"Let him go! You're hurting him!" Gabriel kept shouting.

"Go back to bed, Gabriel" their father sternly ordered.

The sixteen year old Gabriel didn't move a muscle. Instead he inspected Cas from a distance, up and down, still parading the angriest face he seemed to be able to muster. Out of nowhere he did his Dungeons And Dragons battle scream and ran towards them, probably to try and pry their father's fastened fingers from Cas' meek arm. He tugged at his pinstriped work shirt for a second before he was batted out of the way with ease, a loud smack echoing in Cas' ears as Gabriel fell to the floor with his hands on his face.

"Be glad you're not as a big of a disappointment as this one, Gabriel" their father roared, flinging Cas out of bed and across the room.

His older brother crawled over to him and hugged him. Cas could feel himself shaking, and it wasn't until their father had left the room that he dared to cry properly, loud snivels and runny snot, hiding his face against his brothers t-shirt.

"Cas!"

He felt like he was fading.

"Cas! Wake up!"

He opened his eyes slowly, peering up at Dean who was leaning over him. His eyes were wide and his hands on Cas were hard. He looked worried.

"I'm sorry..." He yawned.

"What you apologisin' for? Scaring me half to death?" Dean sat back on the mattress and gave Cas some room to sit up straight; he reached for the glass on his nightstand but it was gone. "You broke it. Whipping your arms around like that. It's a miracle you didn't break anything else."

Cas looked down on the floor. Glass shards had shot out everywhere over the floorboards.

"Sorry. Bad dream. Did I wake you?" He looked around; the room was brighter, despite the curtains still being drawn.

"You could say that."

"Sorry."

"You okay?"

Cas nodded.

"Just a bad dream."

Dean pulled him into his arms and held him for a moment before he kissed the top of his head and stood up.

"Don't move. I'll get the vacuum cleaner" he said and headed downstairs.

Just a bad dream.

 


	6. Ash and snow

"You haven't made me food this many days in a row since-..." Cas pretended to think. "Since ever." He took another big fork full of pancake and shifted in his seat; his legs started growing numb under his weight. The ghostbusters were bustin' ghosts on the TV screen, efficiently pushing his bad dream further into the dark void that was the back of his mind.

With a heavy thump Dean jumped down on the couch next to Cas, balancing his own plate of pancakes. His stack was drowning in syrup.

"Listen, you smell something?" Dean said and cocked his head. "It's pancakes. What're you complaining for?"

Cas made a face.

"I'm not complaining, complaining is what you do when you're trying to summon a plane, like a giant dog." He raised his voice and pretended to call out. "Come plane! Come, come plane!"

Dean laughed and shook his head. He stuffed his mouth full of sticky golden pancake and gave Cas a wide smile.

"That's disgusting!"

"You sure you don't want any syrup? Anything tasty is good for ya" Dean insisted. He held out his fork with a large, dripping, rolled up slice. A head shake was all he got in return.

"Maybe you'd want to go get that organic blueberry jam for me?" He blinked at Dean and tilted his head, hoping he managed to look angelic and persuasive.

"Fine" Dean said and put down his plate on the coffee table. He stood up and left the room. "But it's still sugar! Just 'cause it says freckin' organic on it..."

"If Jess suggests it, I'll try it" he said, shrugging a shoulder. "And I don't use liters of it, like someone else I know!" he added teasingly. "I don't want diabetes for my birthday!"

"Duly noted, marshmallow man!" Dean shouted from the kitchen.

The over-glorified bug exterminators saved the day on the screen, and vacuumed up all the ghosts. Credits rolled. Cas clicked over to the next channel. The news was on and a bland, indifferent news anchor spoke.

"...begins today for the man who helped his girlfriend torture and kill her son for displaying homosexual tendencies. The eight year old's body was bruised, gagged and bound in a closet when he was found by first responders at-"

Cas clicked on to the next channel, and then the next, and the next. He suddenly felt sick. He let the fork drop to the side of his pancakes.

Dean returned, reached out the jar of blueberry jam to Cas... and eventually sat down when he received no response, putting the jar on the couch between them.

"Did it end?" he exclaimed at the TV.

"Huh?" Cas was pulled out of his own head. "Oh, yeah. But I think 'Rebel Without A Cause' is on next."

"Don't you mean, the story of my life" Dean said, raising his eyebrows flirtatiously.

"You're not a rebel" Cas suddenly laughed. "Not Dean Winchester, who picked up his cigarette ash because some geeky boy said it ruined the snow." He kept grinning; Dean was the biggest dork Cas knew, certainly not a tough guy anyway.

Dean choked on a slice of pancake and coughed before he fell silent.

"What?" Cas raised an eyebrow questioningly. He started to feel weird, cold, as if a window stood open somewhere, and the chill made him uncomfortable.

"Are you tellin' me you remember that?"

"What?"

"Err... The... The night we met."

Now it was Cas's turn to stay quiet in confusion. Slowly, he peered his eyes at Dean, as if that would help him think better. He soon relaxed his face and ate another rolled up slice of thin pancake.

"No." He practically shovelled pancake into his mouth, his plate was nearly empty. "I asked you to let this go, Dean" he muttered with his mouth full.

"But what about the ash in the snow?"

"I-... I don't know. I don't know where that came from." He stood up and brought his empty plate to the kitchen. Turning on the tap in the sink, he froze for a moment before he started washing off his plate. He honestly had no idea where that had come from, and he didn't want Dean to start bugging him about his memory again; he had actually left the topic alone for days now.

"Son of a bitch" he heard Dean say to himself as he followed him. "What about the freckin' ash in the freckin' snow, Cas?" Dean insisted.

Cas turned off the water and put the clean plate in the wash stand to dry; some foam still glistened on the white porcelain. The sunlight felt warm on his bare forearms, coming in through the kitchen window. Dean was stood in the doorway, watching him. Cas pushed past him and reached for his light coat; it looked to be a nice, sunny day, but you could never be too certain.

"Where are you going?" Dean almost sounded desperate.

"I'm seeing doctor Mills today" he answered, stepping into his black leather brogues without untying them.

"Good." Now he just sounded brusque. "Maybe she can knock some sense into that thick head of yours."

"Don't be childish." He kissed Dean on his bristly cheek. "Maybe you want to go in my stead. Might do you good."

"That mumbo jumbo isn't for me."

Cas kissed him again before he left.

The wall-mounted clock seemed to be ticking louder than normal in doctor Jody Mills' office this day. But two other things were the same; Mills' unwavering tries to get something out of him, and Cas' colossal and deafening guilt of not having any progress to show for.

"How have you been, Castiel?" she began. She had her friendly smile on.

He found himself glancing at the clock already.

"I've been good." At some point in time.

"Good, that's good. Have you called your family?"

"No."

"How come?"

"If you've never had your mother aggressively washing dishes or folding laundry at you, I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"You'd be surprised at what I can understand" she said with a careful smile. "How about this then. I know we've tried it before, but maybe we can try it once more. If you don't mind telling me something about your life, anything. Whatever you want to talk about. I won't interrupt, you can even pretend I'm not here, if that would facilitate...?"

She had said 'anything', but he knew that what she wanted was something old, something from his life before.

"My mother and I were quite close when I was a kid" he admitted; he wanted to give Mills something, for trying so hard to get through to him. His shirt felt a little clammy. "She taught me to sew. Mike was hanging out with his friends and Gabe played soccer with his... I had a hard time making friends. I guess that's one thing that made my father so suspicious."

"You not having friends made him suspicious?"

Cas shrugged.

"I think so. Right from the start, first day in school. I didn't fit in. The other children thought I was boring so I mostly sat by myself and drew." Suddenly he felt himself smiling, and he blushed, as if he had caught himself doing something worse. "I once did one of me and this boy I liked. He had a pretty princess dress and I had a tuxedo and there were birds and I was pretty pleased with it."

"That sounds nice." She smiled thoughtfully.

"Yeah... My teacher thought it was a picture of me marrying a girl, though. She said it was really good so she wanted to show it to my parents at a PTA meeting... I tore it up. I knew they would know... my parents... if they saw it." He turned silent for a moment.

"It sounds like you had quite a hard time with your dad." She waited for him to pick up the thread; he felt her eyes on him. "Our brains have a negativity bias, so it will remember negative memories more than good ones. It helps us to better protect ourselves, but it can also be quite disheartening... What was it like living with your father?"

All of a sudden, Cas felt sick. He didn't want to talk any more.

"Growing up... Gays were crazy. Gays were wrong. He wouldn't bring it up often, but when he did, he made sure we all knew, you know, what we were supposed to think." Cas drew a breath. It felt shakey. "He made me get into all these typical 'male activities'. Woodworking in school. Soccer after school. Same as Gabe. I don't think he liked that, Gabe, because soccer was like his thing. But Gabe was nice to me, nicer than the rest of them anyway. He did still have his band though, so that's something." Cas tried to think of more things to say. He noticed himself pulling at his cuticles. "Gabe was the lead singer of a Christian rock band."

"So Gabriel was nicer than your oldest brother too?"

"Michael?"

"Yeah. Wasn't he looking out for you?"

"Not really. Mike was a deacon at our children's church. I think he liked it a little too much."

She was quite for a noticeable second. "So did you play soccer with your brother then, with Gabriel?"

"Err..." He furrowed his eyebrows. "Sometimes. I didn't really understand what was going on, but I started playing for my parents' sake. It wasn't boring but I wasn't into it either. That was when I was... fourteen, maybe?"

"The teenage years, huh? How did you find it? I've got two teenage daughters, and sometimes I don't think even a PhD in psychology can help me understand them" she laughed. She evidently kept the conversation light on purpose.

Cas' eyes drifted across the room towards her desk. There was a picture frame on it with a photograph of two girls, one dark-haired and one blonde; no redheads, like Jodie. He hadn't noticed the photo before.

"It was alright. I finally had some friends by then."

"I'm glad to hear it!"

He smiled awkwardly. What do you say to that, 'thank you'?

"Most of them from our church. Mostly girls. Boys stayed away from me. I didn't mind."

"Did your dad get off your back at all then?"

Cas felt warm, his skin itchy. His heart was beating faster and his body felt uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and tried to ignore the feeling of nakedness.

"Father always had his 'it's a disgrace' face on whenever he had to interact with me" he summarised. He wasn't sure which memories were real. He thought about his bad dream. He wanted to go home to Dean. "It was like he was the church, even before he bought one. Not even when I came home from church could I get away from it. It was all brimstone, fire. I carried my Bible to school every day. Christianity was my life."

Jody Mills was quiet yet again. Cas couldn't tell if she was actually writing down anything important, or if she was just doodling to pass the time, like they do in the movies.

"After our last session, did you ask Dean about your scars?" Jody asked carefully, shifting focus slightly. She probably understood more than he did. Or maybe he just didn't want to understand.

She nudged at something in his head, like the persistent lid of a new jar of pickles that just won't quite open. Or maybe more like an old shoebox tucked away at the back of a closet, full of an undesirable jumble of mismatching cables and wires for mobile phones that probably weren't even in use anymore; a black hole of nothingness, and he hadn't even thought about or noticed that there was something missing there.

"Did your father abuse you?"

Cas forced himself to think of nothing at all until he got to his car and finally sat safely inside the vehicle. He drove over the river bridge in the middle of town and even passed by the church and sped out of the borough onto the country road, before tears started to swell up and blur his vision; it annoyed him to find himself crying over nothing, and he angrily tried to blink the tears away. His grip was tight on the steering wheel and his foot felt dangerously tenacious on the gas pedal.

All of a sudden he jumped and took his foot off of the accelerator when his phone rang. His heart was still speeding when he answered, one hand still with a firm grip on the wheel.

"It's Cas" he said, breathing heavily to calm down.

"You on your way home?" Dean asked. He sounded stressed.

"Yeah-"

"Why don't you stay in town for a bit longer. Get us something sugary, or... somethin'."

"I'm almost about to pull into the driveway. What's this about, Dean?" Ideas of secret surprises swept through his head and he suddenly felt his heart rush with joyous excitement instead of panic.

He saw their drive way curve in just ahead of him and stepped on the gas again.

"No- Wait- Just-"

Cas mindlessly lowered the phone from his ear without hearing Dean's protests, as he caught sight of the house, coming to a halt and parking his car next to the Impala. The excitement quickly switched place with quick breaths and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach once more.

"You'll burn."

Those were the words scrawled in black spray-paint across the wall panelling along their front porch. "Leviticus 18:22" covered the front door.

Dean was in the middle of scrubbing the threat off of their house, when he looked up and met Cas' stare. Cas couldn't move; Dean was up on his feet before Cas could even comprehend what was happening. A few seconds later, Dean opened the car door for him and tugged at his jacket to step out. He followed suit. Dean wrapped his arms around him. He felt warm.

"You okay?"

Cas nodded against Dean's shoulder; he wasn't sure, but he nodded.

"This is going too far. C'mon." He broke away from Cas and started walking back towards the house. "I took a picture. I'm calling the cops."

He sat on the couch with his legs crossed under him while Dean was on the phone, pacing back and forth through the kitchen, the hallway, the living room, back out to the kitchen. Time seemed to move much slower than usual. Dean was audibly holding back anger as he explained the situation to the police officer on the other end of the line. A moment later he came back out to the living room, mobilephone in hand, and sat down on the couch next to Cas.

"They won't do shit. Says it's just some pranksters." Dean gritted his teeth. He started typing something rapidly on his phone screen. "Prank or not, these sons o' bitches are coming too close to our house."

Cas took a deep breath.

"Don't worry, Cas, I'll take care of it. I knew that gun license would come in handy. Don't freak out, but you need to know, I've got a Mossberg in a safe in the back of the basement, behind the shelf with the tent n' all that. There're two new boxes of buckshots too."

"Jesus, Dean..." Cas rubbed at his face.

"You need to know. If I'm not home-... Hopefully the sound of the pump racking'll be enough to scare 'em away."

He took another deep breath. It was all a bit much.

"Did you know doctor Mills has kids?" Cas thought out loud.

Dean's busy hands slowed down, as he stopped to think.

"Yeah, er... Alex and... Clara? I don't remember." He resumed typing on his phone. "Bobby said she adopted them after her family was killed."

"Killed?" He had had no idea.

"Yeah. Someone broke into their house, to steal some crap, I guess. Ended up killing Jody's husband and son. She crashed on Ellen's counter at the bar a bunch, and then on her couch. Changed jobs. She used to be a police officer. Bet they would've been more helpful right now if we still had her on the inside."

They were quiet for a while.

"Who are you texting?"

"Sam. I don't wanna get charged if I end up shooting one of these bitches."

Cas nodded, probably just to himself because Dean was preoccupied. The wrinkle between his eyebrows said not to disturb.

"You want a coffee? I could do with a coffee."

"Shit."

"What?"

Dean finally looked up from his phone.

"Bobby's coming over with the van. I gotta take the big armchairs to the buyer. I forgot that was today. I can call and cancel if you-"

"No, no." Cas tried on a smile. "Go. You've worked so hard on them. And we could do with the money, to be honest."

Dean nodded. He leaned closer, ruffled Cas' hair and kissed the top of his head.

"I'll be back as soon as I can. I'll wash the rest of the wall out front later."

He ended up moping around the silent house with a cup of coffee, as he waited for Dean to return. He glanced out the windows from time to time and scoffed at himself for being so paranoid. With one of his shoes, he propped the front door open slightly to let the evening air in. He reheated barbecue leftovers and turned on the TV for company. Old reruns of some crime show was on, and he settled for the repetitive plot, which eventually seemed to grow on him with each passing episode.

Suddenly, while chewing on a rib, he caught something moving in the corner of his eye, and flinched. The orange cat had returned. Unbeknownst to Cas, it must have snuck in through the ajar door and followed the scent of his food. It sat by his feet and tried to peek up onto his plate, licking its snout.

"Back, huh?"

The cat shifted its widened eyes up at him for a second and then back to the food. Cas followed its stare.

"Are you hungry?" He patted the seat next to him. "Come here then."

It took a little while but eventually the cat got the message and jumped up on the couch. Almost immediately it pounced for the plate, but Cas managed to get his arm in the way.

"No" he laughed.

With his already sticky fingers he pulled off a piece of sauce-free meat and held it out. The cat sniffed it before it exposed its sharp teeth and grabbed the meat, dropping it one the couch before biting into it. It made little chewing noises as it ate.

"Dean would kill me if he knew about this" Cas said to himself. He couldn't help but smile though, sharing his sad, microwaved dinner with this stray cat. They were both strays, in a way. "You need a name" he thought out loud.

It meowed for more food and Cas complied. When the food had been eaten, they got comfortable on the couch; the cat rolled up into a ball on his arm and started to purr. Cas couldn't stop grinning.

The next morning, he woke up feeling like a crinkled and discarded piece of paper. The summer light was golden and warm from outside. He vaguely remembered Dean waking him up on the couch and leading him to the bed. The cat must have left while he slept.

Cas heard a knock on the front door downstairs and sat up enough to rest the weight of his body on his elbows; his eyes felt puffy and tired, and his mouth was dry. He heard Dean open the door, and he could almost feel the tense waiting vibrate in the air around him. Joy-filled, surprised voices followed by muffled conversation reached him, but just barely.

Carefully he moved the covers off of him, got out of bed and pulled on a robe before he ventured as far as he dared down the stairs. He peeked out and saw the backs of Dean and a broad, strange man with a blue hat stuffed down into the back pocket of his jeans. The two continued into the kitchen. Cas stayed unseen. The thought hit him that he was being ridiculous, eavesdropping, but it didn't feel like there was enough space for him in there along with Dean and his guest.

"Y' want anythin'?" he could hear Dean ask. A chair was pulled out, scraping over the floor boards. "Coffee? Beer?" He paused and chuckled. "Tea?"

Cas glanced in, hidden behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the hallway. The strange man gave Dean one look and that seemed to be answer enough for him.

"Beer then." He took two out of the bottom shelf; one for himself and one for the man.

"Dean-... You're easily one of the strongest men I've met."

"Thanks" Dean was quick to say. He sat down by the kitchen table on the chair opposite from his visitor. The man offered him a plastic lighter and Dean popped the bottle caps off with it.

"A little too headstrong if you ask me."

They both laughed. Cas felt like an intruder in his own home, pressed up against the wall out in the hallway, listening to things he had no business listening to; things he knew nothing about. He peeked out slightly again and caught the other man's face reflecting in the kitchen window. If he leaned too far, Dean would see him.

"Shut up."

"Too quick to throw yourself away for others, dive into things" the man continued, ignoring Dean.

Cas got a sudden, stabbing pain in his chest.

"Even somethin' as insignificant as pulling my ass outta a hell hole like that!" The man drew a sharp breath and grinned as if he remembered something. A better time perhaps.

"Brothers in arms and all that, y'know." He took a sip of his beer. "It's pretty much the job."

"Bullshit. It's not just a job."

"I mean-" Dean continued. "You gotta know your grams if you need to blast through a steel plate door from just a couple o' meters away, without blowin' up myself or my giggly team of schoolgirls."

"That wasn't you-!"

"Bullshit, 'twas me."

They laughed again.

Cas took deep, shaking breaths that felt too loud. His nails burrowed into the soft palms of his hands.

"When we were sent back home, we-... we drifted apart." Even with that deep voice, Cas could hear that the man was struggling to say those words. "Couldn't be there like I'd thought we would. Had your brother t' worry 'bout, and I had my girl. But you always wanted to help. That's why I couldn't tell ya 'bout my troubles."

Something scarped across the floor.

"What you saying, you been causing trouble?" Dean chuckled like he used to.

"Hey, I kept my nose clean this whole time." They were quiet for a moment. "It's not Afghanistan anymore. I ain't your responsibility and you ain't mine. We ain't obligated t' watch each other's backs like... like back then and there." He took a mouthful of his beer and swallowed it with a hiss. "But it's still a friendship forged outta hell. You say the word, I'll be there in a second."

"You know I ain't gonna ask you for nothin', Benny" Dean said casually, but still with warmth in his voice. "But thanks."

"I'm serious, man. If there's ever anything..."

"We're doing alright. I'm alright, Benny. Swear it."

Benny?

"Right." He raised the bottle to his lips again.

"And what about you? I mean, it was my gig to know exactly how many clicks of elevation I needed on the scope of my rifle to take a headshot on a moving target from seven-hundred meters away. I might not be a hired gun anymore, but I can still tell when something ain't right, no matter how small the sign." Dean raised his eyebrows pointedly and looked right at this Benny guy, seemingly waiting for him to spill the beans.

Cas' throat went dry. Dean had never told him this. He didn't want to hear any more. Not like this.

Barefoot and robe-clad he walked out on the porch and stopped right infront of the three steps leading down to the ground. He pretended that he could feel the strong earth under him, grounding him. He sensed the breeze, smelled the scents from the water and the forest, he imagined the heat from the dusty road and the wind above the treetops surrounding them and the fields further on, following the winding road in both directions. He stood there, just existing, until he heard chairs scraping on the floor again and he ran inside. He carefully closed the bathroom door behind him. This was a new low; hiding in his own home. He listened with his ear pressed against the door as Dean said goodbye to Benny, then he waited a few minutes more just to be sure, brushing his teeth in the meantime.

When he figured it was safe to reappear without having to introduce himself to any new people, he opened the door, threw a glance out the wide open front door and walked into the kitchen. He approached Dean's turned back; he had just about finished rinsing out the last drops of stinking beer from the bottles in the sink. It felt fun, in a way; being there without Dean's knowledge, and with the running water to mask his careful footsteps, that is, until Dean turned his head slightly and broke the spell. He left the bottles and hunched over slightly, seemingly pinching at the little bit of soft belly Cas knew that he had at his midriff.

"You ever had a pimple in your bellybutton, Cas?" He didn't look up again, but hearing Dean say the word 'bellybutton' made Cas chuckle. "I'm just-... asking for a friend."

"Whom? The lint monster living in your life knot?"

Dean repeated Cas' words to himself in a childish voice, making a face.

He came closer, standing right behind Dean's back. Softly, Cas put his arms around Dean, pressed himself close, and kissed the back of his neck before nuzzling his nose and forehead in the same spot. Dean was warm and the scruff at his nape tickled Cas' cheek.

"What was that?" Dean chuckled.

"I believe it's called 'affection'" Cas answered, his breath rolling over Dean.

"Gross..." Dean said with a smile in his voice. "Do it again."

Cas smiled and did as he was asked, kissing Dean's neck again.

"Was someone here?" he asked sheepishly.

Dean turned around.

"Just an old buddy. Benny."

Cas nodded as if he hadn't known.

"You should meet him" Dean said. "I told him we're celebrating your birthday. He wants us to go out for a drink."

Cas raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"What do ya say, Cas?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Help! What should Cas name the cat? ;)


End file.
